nerican  Social  Work  in 
e  Twentieth  Century 

DWARD  T.  DEVINE  and  LILIAN  BRANDT 


i^«vfa 


D  cents 


THE  FRONTIER   PRESS 

lOO  WEST  TWENTY-FIRST   STREET 
NEW  YORK 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


KOENIG-MOAK   PRINTING  COMPANY 
NEWYORK 


American  Social  Work  in 
the  Twentieth  Century 


By 
EDWARD  T.  DEVINE 
and    LILIAN    BRANDT 


Expanded  by  permission  from  an  article 

contributed  by  the  authors  to  the 

Encyclopaedia  Britannica 


NEW  YORK 
THE  FRONTIER  PRESS 

1921 


•      • 


•   •   *  •    • 

• ,  •     •  •  • 

•  «•  •     • 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.     INTRODUCTION ' i-^ 

II.     AT  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  CENTURY    -     -    -  3-16 

Public  relief       -- 3 

Private   philanthropy        ____-------  6 

The  treatment  of  crinminals  ----------  8 

State  supervision     -------------  12 

Beginnings  of  preventive  philanthropy  ------  13 

Discussion  of  problems     -----------  14 

III.     DEVELOPMENTS    IN    THE    TWENTIETH    CEN- 
TURY       17-48 

Dominant    ideas      -------------  18 

The  new  social  movements  ----------  19 

Research   and  surveys      -----------  22 

Reaction  on  relief  and  correction _--  24 

Study  of  methods    -------------  27 

Training  schools     -------------  28 

Formulation  of  standards     ----------  30 

Coordination  and  "programs"  ---------  32 

Financial  federations  and  community  trusts  -     -     -     -  33 

Increased  reliance  on  government     -------  37 

Changes  in  vocabulary     -----------  40 

Confusion   and   duplication   - -  42 

The  war  and  social  work    ----------  44 

IV.     PRACTICAL  ADVANCE:  1900-1920 49-62 

General    relief    ------- --  49 

Child   welfare    --------------  51 

Care  of  the  sick  and  promotion  of  health  -----  53 

Treatment  of  crime    ------------  56 

Improvement  of  conditions  -- 58 

Present  needs     --------------  6i 


Copyright,   1921   by 
The  Frontier  Press 


INTRODUCTION 

In  the  United  States  of  America  "social  work" 
has  come  Into  use  In  recent  years  as  a  comprehensive 
term,  Including  charity  and  philanthropy,  public 
relief,  punishment  and  reformation,  and  all  other 
conscious  efforts,  whether  by  the  state  or  on  private 
Initiative,  to  provide  for  the  dependent,  the  sick,  and 
the  criminal,  to  diminish  the  amount  of  poverty,  dis- 
ease, and  crime,  and  to  Improve  general  living  and 
working  conditions. 

The  twentieth  century  has  seen  an  extraordinary 
development  In  this  field.  The  number  of  persons 
interested — whether  as  volunteers,  serving  on 
boards  and  committees,  or  as  contributors  of  finan- 
cial support,  or  as  salaried  employees,  making  this 
their  daily  occupation — has  multiplied  manyfold. 
The  amount  of  money  appropriated  from  taxes,  an- 
nual contributions  for  the  current  work  of  privately 
supported  organizations,  and  endowments  by  men 
and  women  of  wealth,  have  increased  enormously. 
New  forms  of  social  work  have  come  into  existence, 
some  of  which  have  had  a  marked  Influence  in  Eng- 
land and  other  foreign  countries.  The  older  forms 
have  improved  their  methods,  as  well  as  extended 
their  scope.  Principles  have  been  formulated; 
standards  have  been  set  up;  training  courses  have 

^\^%j  f>0%j  ■J 


J 


*A!\^ERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 


been  established;  general  instruction  has  been  intro- 
duced into  the  colleges  and  universities,  and  even  to 
some  extent  into  the  secondary  schools;  a  technical 
literature  has  been  produced;  intelligent  discussion 
of  social  problems  in  the  popular  periodicals  and 
the  daily  press  has  become  common. 

Along  with  this  rapid  expansion,  a  unifying 
process  has  been  going  on,  of  which  the  very  term 
''social  work"  is  at  once  an  evidence  and  a  result. 
Before  1900  there  was  no  such  collective  name.  In 
the  early  years  of  the  twentieth  century,  however, 
as  individuals  engaged  in  the  various  forms  of  pub- 
lic relief  and  private  charity,  in  penal  and  custodial 
institutions,  and  in  social  reform,  became  more  and 
more  conscious  of  their  common  interests,  and  as 
new  undertakings  came  into  existence  which  were 
of  an  obvious  kinship,  though  they  could  not  prop- 
erly be  described  as  either  charity  or  correction, 
"social  work"  came  Into  use  to  meet  the  need  for  a 
comprehensive  term.  While  It  Is  still  used  with  con- 
siderable latitude — extended  by  some  to  Include 
almost  anything  which  contributes  to  the  social  wel- 
fare; by  others  reserved  for  voluntary  charitable 
work  done  In  the  most  approved  way — It  has  grad- 
ually acquired  a  fairly  definite  content,  and  is  now 
current  In  the  sense  we  have  indicated.* 


*For  a  fuller  discussion  of  the  scope  and  nature  of  social  work 
and  its  distinguishing  characteristics  in  America  as  compared  with 
corresponding  activities  in  other  countries  see  Social  Work,  by 
Edward  T.  Devine,  Chapters  I-V,  published  by  the  Macmillan 
Company,  New  York. 


II 

AT  THE  BEGINNING  OF 
THE  CENTURY 

Although  the  laws  in  American  states  do  not  unl- 
formly  recognize  what  in  England  is  called  the 
''right  to  relief,"  there  has  always  been  nevertheless 
a  tacit  assumption  that  any  kind  of  misfortune 
which  threatens  life  or  physical  well-being  should  be 
provided  for;  and  that  if  relatives,  friends,  or  vol- 
untary agencies  do  not  make  such  provision,  the 
state  must,  or  at  least  should,  do  so  in  some  way. 

PUBLIC    RELIEF 

In  colonial  days  this  assumption  was  met  by  such 
expedients  as  naturally  suggested  themselves  to  prac- 
tical, hard-working  men,  engaged  in  building  a  new 
country;  at  first  by  providing  for  each  case  indi- 
vidually, by  special  action  of  the  town  or  county 
officials;  later  by  a  system  of  out-door  relief,  by  ap- 
prenticeship and  indenture  for  orphan  children,  by 
hiring  out  dependents  with  any  degree  of  working 
capacity  to  the  highest  bidder  and  turning  over  the 
infirm  and  helpless  to  the  lowest  bidder.  The 
abuses  which  developed  both  in  out-door  relief  and 
in  the  contract  and  lease  system  led,  in  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  to  the  establishment 
of     almshouses    by    town    or    county     authorities 


AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 


throughout  the  older  states,  to  serve  as  a  general 
asylum  for  all  classes  of  dependents  and  defectives 
and  also  for  some  classes  of  delinquents. 

By  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  a  great 
variety  of  public  institutions  and  agencies  had  been 
differentiated  from  the  almshouse.  Public  opinion 
by  this  time  had  generally  recognized  that  the  alms- 
house was  not  a  suitable  place  for  tramps,  vagrants, 
and  disorderly  persons;  for  children;  for  the  insane, 
feeble-minded,  epileptic,  blind,  and  deaf;  for  con- 
finement cases,  cases  of  acute  illness  and  contagious 
disease;  but  that  all  these  classes  should  be  provided 
for  in  specialized  institutions,  leaving  in  the  alms- 
house, whicTi  thus  becomes  itself  a  specialized  insti- 
tution, only  the  aged  infirm  and  chronically  disabled 
who  are  in  need  of  public  support. 

These  theoretical  conclusions,  however,  were  by 
no  means  completely  in  any  state,  or  uniformly 
throughout  the  country,  embodied  in  practice.  In 
many  of  the  newer  states,  with  no  correctional  insti- 
tutions except  jails  and  state  prison,  the  courts  still 
habitually  committed  certain  minor  offenders  to  the 
almshouses.  Although  sentiment  against  subjecting 
children  to  the  influences  of  almshouse  life  had 
crystallized  early  and  unmistakably,  there  were 
seventeen  states  which  in  1900  still  maintained  their 
dependent  children  in  almshouses.  Probably  the 
greatest  progress  toward  specialized  care  had  been 
made  in  the  case  of  the  insane,  but  in  most  of  the 
states  these  institutions  were  still  inadequate   and 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 


consequently  over-crowded,  while  in  many  a  certain 
number  of  insane  public  charges  were  still  to  be 
found  in  the  county  poorhouses  or  even  in  the  jails; 
and  the  horsewhip  was  still  advocated  by  some  of 
their  official  guardians  as  the  most  efficacious  means 
for  quieting  the  violent.  State  schools  for  blind  and 
deaf  children  had  been  quite  generally  established, 
but  there  was  practically  no  provision  for  the  in- 
struction of  persons  who  became  blind  or  deaf  or 
otherwise  disabled  in  adult  life.  There  were  only 
26  public  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded  in  the 
country,  and  special  provision  for  epileptics  was 
rare.  Even  In  so  advanced  a  state  as  New  York 
there  were  about  as  many  "idiots,"  feeble-minded, 
and  epileptic  in  the  almshouse  as  in  the  special  insti- 
tutions for  their  care.  There  were  still  many  large 
cities  and  towns  which  had  no  general  public  hos- 
pital; confinement  cases  were  very  generally  ad- 
mitted to  the  almshouses,  in  default  of  any  other 
place  for  their  reception;  and  as  there  was  almost 
no  public  provision  for  the  care  of  consumptives, 
and  little  under  private  auspices,  they  were  found 
in  large  numbers  in  the  almshouse  population.  Ex- 
cept in  certain  cities,  out-door,  relief  was  very  gen- 
erally given  by  local  public  officials  throughout  the 
country^  in  the  form  of  groceries,  fuel,  clothing,  and 
sometimes  in  money.  This,  and  the  undifferentiated 
almshouse,  were  still  the  public  provision  available 
for  the  majority  of  dependents. 


AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 


PRIVATE    PHILANTHROPY 

Parallel  with  the  public  agencies  were  many 
which  had  been  established,  and  were  conducted, 
under  church  auspices,  or  by  Incorporated  societies 
or  less  formal  associations  of  private  Individuals. 
Division  between  public  and  private  responsibility 
has  not  been  determined  by  a  priori  reasoning.  It 
has  developed  pragmatically.  The  state,  holding 
the  position  of  ultimate  responsibility,  has  been 
obliged  to  make  provision  for  such  classes  as  have 
not  Inspired  private  charities,  for  the  residual  ele- 
ment In  all  classes,  and  for  those  who  need  control 
or  restraint  of  some  kind  as  well  as  maintenance. 
Public  provision  has  been  most  successful  for  those 
who  can  be  cared  for  advantageously  In  groups,  be- 
cause they  need  education  or  professional  treatment 
which  can  best  be  organized  In  an  Institution;  and 
for  those  whose  condition  warrants  temporary  or 
permanent  removal  from  their  homes,  either  In  their 
own  Interest  or  for  the  sake  of  others.  It  has,  how- 
ever, by  no  means  been  limited  In  this  way,  and 
while  there  has  been  much  discussion  of  the  prin- 
ciples which  should  determine  the  division  of  work 
between  public  and  private  agencies,  there  is  even 
yet  no  generally  accepted  theory. 

The  institutions  under  private  auspices  which  ex- 
isted in  1900  were  chiefly  orphan  asylums,  hospitals, 
and  homes  for  the  aged.  Most  churches  gave 
charitable  assistance  on  occasion  to  their  own  mem- 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 


bers,  and  the  larger  ones  had  a  Ladles'  Aid  Society 
or  a  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  Society  or  some  other  more 
or  less  formally  organized  machinery  for  the  pur- 
pose. In  the  cities  there  were  "bread  lines"  and 
"soup  kitchens"  and  temporary  shelters  for  the 
homeless.  In  many  places  there  were  non-sectarian 
general  relief  societies,  such  as  the  New  York  Asso- 
ciation for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor, 
dating  from  the  forties;  and  In  about  a  hundred 
cities.  Including  practically  all  the  larger  ones,  there 
was  a  Charity  Organization  Society  or  Associated 
Charities  or  United  Charities,  modelled — perhaps 
too  slavishly  for  American  needs — after  the  London 
Charity  Organization  Society  or  one  of  the  early 
American  copies  of  that  English  society. 

There  were  also  many  societies  for  assisting  cer- 
tain classes  of  the  needy  In  their  own  homes — 
widows,  for  example,  or  members  of  a  particular 
nationality — some  of  which  dated  back  nearly  a  cen- 
tury; or  for  giving  some  particular  kind  of  help, 
such  as  legal  aid.  There  were  i6i  societies  for  the 
protection  of  children  from  cruelty  and  neglect, 
either  as  their  sole  object  or  In  addition  to  the  pro- 
tection of  animals;  and  a  considerable  number  of 
societies  performing  one  or  more  of  the  functions 
of  the  pioneer  Children's  Aid  Society  of  New  York 
— to  find  homes  In  families  for  homeless  children, 
to  conduct  lodiilng-houses  and  reading-rooms  for 
newsboys,  and  in  other  ways  to  promote  the  welfare 
of  city   "waifs."      "Fresh-air  societies"   existed  to 


V- 


AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 


provide  outings  of  a  day  or  longer  in  the  country 
or  at  the  seashore  for  city  children.  "Visiting  nurs- 
ing associations"  had  demonstrated  the  value  of 
such  service,  and  forty  or  fifty  had  been  organized, 
with  an  aggregate  force  of  not  more  than  140  nurses 
in  the  entire  country.  In  the  larger  cities  and  indus- 
trial centers  day  nurseries  had  been  established  for 
the  convenience  of  wage-earning  mothers  and  to 
reduce  the  number  of  children  who  were  candidates 
for  a  place  in  an  institution. 

THE   TREATMENT   OF    CRIMINALS 

In  the  treatment  of  criminals  America  had  made 
several  notable  contributions  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. The  reformatory  system  for  adult  first  of- 
fenders, developed  at  Elmira,  New  York  (opened 
In  1876),  by  Z.  R.  Brockway,  out  of  various  ele- 
ments of  treatment  which  had  been  tried  separately 
in  scattered  places,  had  commended  Itself  to  penol- 
ogists, and  reformatories  for  men  sixteen  to  thirty 
years  of  age  constituted  a  part  of  the  correctional 
system  of  ten  or  more  states.  Reformatories  for 
women  existed  in  only  three.  The  indeterminate 
sentence,  though  the  idea  may  not  have  originated  In 
the  United  States,  was  first  embodied  in  law  in 
Michigan  in  1867,  and  received  its  Impetus  from 
the  development  of  the  reformatory  system,  of 
which  It  formed  an  essential  feature.  By  1900  It 
was  in  use  in  commitments  to  reformatories  In  eight 
or  ten  states,  to  penitentiaries  in  two,  and  was  al- 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 


lowed  by  law  in  several  others.  Parole — conditional 
release  before  expiration  of  sentence — was  per- 
mitted by  law  in  about  half  the  states.  Reformatory 
schools  for  juvenile  delinquents,  which  had  naturally 
come  into  existence  much  earlier  than  reformatories 
for  adults,  were  to  be  found  by  1900  in  four-fifths 
of  the  states — more  of  them  for  boys  than  for  girls, 
even  in  proportion  to  their  numbers  as  delinquents. 

Juvenile  courts  were  just  at  the  beginning  of  their 
development.  The  pioneer  law  had  been  passed  in 
Illinois  in  1899,  and  the  first  separate  court  for 
children  opened  in  Chicago  in  July  of  that  year. 
Probation  also  was  only  beginning  to  receive  atten- 
tion. Growing  out  of  the  privilege  of  the  court  to 
suspend  sentence  after  conviction,  it  had  been  in 
practice  in  connection  with  adult  offenders  through- 
out Massachusetts  for  twenty  years,  and  was  estab- 
lished by  statute  in  New  Jersey  in  1899,  but  had 
not  spread  farther.  As  applied  to  children,  it  had 
not  yet  been  tried. 

Probation,  indeterminate  sentence,  reformatory 
institutions,  special  courts  for  children,  and  even 
specialized  treatment  for  women  and  children  of- 
fenders, were  still,  however,  in  the  position  of 
novelties,  and  affected  relatively  few  individuals. 
Fixed  sentences,  determined  by  the  nature  of  the 
offence,  without  reference  to  the  needs  of  the  of- 
fender, were  the  rule ;  and  they  were  served  for  the 
most  part  under  conditions  dictated  by  the  theory 
of  retribution  rather  than  reformation  as  the  object 


10  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

of  punishment.  For  the  greater  part  of  the  coun- 
try, and  for  the  great  mass  of  law-breakers,  there 
was  no  provision  other  than  the  county  jail  and  the 
state  prison  or  penitentiary.  After  the  long  dispute 
which  had  been  w^aged  through  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  over  the  relative  merits  of  the 
"Pennsylvania"  or  "separate"  plan  of  prison  and 
the  "Auburn"  or  "congregate"  plan,  the  latter,  in 
which  the  men  worked  together  during  the  day  and 
were  locked  up  in  cells  at  night,  had  become  the  pre- 
vailing type.  The  theory  of  isolation  was  kept  only 
in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  in  Philadelphia,  where 
it  had  originated,  and  even  there  it  was  little  more 
than  a  tradition,  since  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  were 
usually  at  least  two  men  in  each  cell.  The  principal 
departure  from  this  prevailing  type,  aside  from  the 
few  reformatory  institutions,  was  in  the  southern 
states,  where  it  was  not  uncommon  for  the  state  and 
county  prisoners  to  be  "leased"  to  private  employers 
in  gangs — a  practice  which  led  to  the  gravest 
abuses.  Almost  no  attention  had  anywhere  been 
paid  to  diet  or  other  physical  or  mental  needs  of 
prisoners. 

As  the  characteristic  charitable  institution  of 
America  is  the  town  or  county  almshouse,  so  the 
characteristic  correctional  institution — east  and 
west,  north  and  south — was  then,  as  it  is  still,  the 
county  jail  or  town  "lock-up."  Intended  originally 
and  primarily  as  a  place  of  detention  for  prisoners 
awaiting    trial,    it    was    also    very    generally    used, 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  11 

except  in  the  large  cities,  as  the  institution  to  which 
minor  offenders  were  consigned  by  the  courts  for 
punishment,  and  sometimes  even  as  an  asylum  for 
the  insane.  Generally  small,  with  the  most  rudi- 
mentary sanitation,  frequently  "fire-traps,"  they  are 
described  by  a  committee  of  the  National  Confer- 
ence of  Charities  and  Correction  in  1900  as  "foul 
dens,  infested  with  vermin,  reeking  with  dirt  and 
filth."  Professional  criminals  and  innocent  persons 
awaiting  trial,  prostitutes,  boys  and  girls  arrested 
for  a  trivial  first  offence,  were  "herded  together"  in 
idleness,  dirt,  and  bad  air.  De  Tocqueville  had 
called  them  the  worst  prisons  he  had  ever  seen,  and 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century  they  had  been 
denounced  as  "schools  of  crime"  and  "breeding- 
places  for  disease,"  until  such  expressions  as  appear 
in  quotation  marks  in  this  paragraph  have  come  to 
be  associated  with  them,  but  the  committee  men- 
tioned above  was  obliged  to  record  in  1900  that 
"tradition,  custom,  and  the  slow  progress  made  in 
American  jurisprudence,  have  left  our  common  jails 
but  little  in  advance  of  the  petty  places  of  incarcera- 
tion known  to  our  forefathers  of  the  past  century." 
Private  charity  in  the  field  of  correction  had  con- 
cerned itself  chiefly  with  establishing  reform  schools 
for  juvenile  delinquents;  "Houses  of  the  Good 
Shepherd,"  "Magdalen  Homes,"  and  "Florence 
Crittenton  Homes"  for  "fallen"  girls  and  women; 
and  prisoners'  aid  societies  for  helping  discharged 
prisoners  to  find  work  and  re-establish  themselves  in 


12  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

society,  official  assistance  at  this  point  being  limited 
to  a  suit  of  civilian  clothes,  transportation  home, 
and  a  little  money  for  immediate  expenses.  The 
National  Prison  Association,  organized  in  1870, 
had  made  distinguished  contributions,  in  its  annual 
meetings,  to  penological  theory,  and  had  done  much 
to  advance  the  adoption  of  practical  reforms,  such 
as  the  indeterminate  sentence  and  the  reformatory 
system. 

STATE  SUPERVISION 

To  ensure  a  certain  standard  in  the  conduct  of 
public  charitable  and  correctional  institutions,  state 
boards  or  commissions  had  been  established  in  over 
half  the  states.  These  were  of  two  main  types: 
(i)  advisory  boards,  with  authority  to  inspect,  re- 
port, and  make  recommendations,  relying  for  their 
influence  chiefly  on  the  power  of  publicity;  and  (2) 
boards  of  control,  with  full  executive  powers  and 
executive  responsibility,  replacing  the  boards  of 
managers  of  the  several  institutions.  The  former 
type  was  considerably  in  the  majority.  In  two  or 
three  of  the  older  states  the  general  supervisory 
board  had  been  broken  up  into  two  or  three  spe- 
cialized bodies — one  for  the  charitable  agencies,  one 
for  the  prisons,  and  one  for  the  institutions  for  the 
insane;  and  there  was  a  disposition  on  the  part  of 
experts  to  favor  such  specialization  in  supervision. 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  13 

BEGINNINGS  OF  PREVENTIVE  PHILANTHROPY 

Of  "preventive  philanthropy"  or  "constructive 
social  work"  there  was  very  little  by  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  There  had  never  been  lacking, 
to  be  sure,  individuals  who  saw  beyond  the  imme- 
diate distress  or  delinquency  or  degradation  of  the 
individual  to  the  social  conditions  which  were  active 
causes  of  their  trouble;  and  it  is  altogether  probable 
that  those  who  were  helping  the  poor  and  providing 
for  homeless  children  twenty  years  ago  were  quite 
as  sincere  as  social  workers  of  to-day  in  their  desire 
to  do  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  them  self-support- 
ing and  self-sufficient  members  of  society  rather  than 
pauperized  dependents  for  life.  But  the  conscious 
emphasis  on  "rehabilitation"  and  the  educational 
"movements"  for  the  improvement  of  social  and  in- 
dustrial conditions  were  almost  wholly  in  the  future. 

Interest  in  providing  public  baths  and  play- 
grounds and  small  parks  in  congested  districts  had 
been  growing  for  several  years.  There  were 
"stamp  saving  societies"  and  other  devices  for  en- 
couraging "thrift"  among  the  poor.  The  New 
York  Tenement  House  Committee  had  begun  work 
in  1899,  and  was  laying  the  foundations  of  the 
housing  movement  in  its  twentieth  century  aspect. 
The  Provident  Loan  Society  had  been  established 
in  New  York,  and  was  competing  successfully  with 
pawnbrokers  of  the  exploiting  type.  The  Consum- 
ers League  had  exposed  the  horrors  of  sweat-shop 


14  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

work,  and  through  its  assault  on  the  conscience  of 
the  consuming  public  was  preparing  the  way  for  a 
general  concern  about  Industrial  conditions.  But 
the  conspicuous  educational  social  agency  at  this 
period  was  the  settlement.  In  the  fourteen  years 
since  Stanton  Colt  had  established  the  Neighbor- 
hood Guild  on  the  lower  East  Side  of  New  York 
City,  the  number  of  settlements  had  increased  to 
over  one  hundred.  They  had  many  forceful  per- 
sonalities among  their  leaders  and  were  attracting 
the  enthusiasm  of  young  college  graduates  and  con- 
tributing a  great  deal  to  an  understanding  of  the 
lives  of  the  poor,  of  the  conditions  under  which  they 
lived,  and  of  the  relation  of  those  conditions  to  pov- 
erty and  disease  and  crime. 

DISCUSSION    OF    PROBLEMS 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  National  Confer- 
ence of  Charities  and  Correction,  with  its  annual 
meetings,  had  served  as  a  medium  through  which 
the  social  workers  of  the  country  exchanged  experi- 
ences, discussed  their  problems,  and  extended  their 
acquaintance;  and  its  volumes  of  proceedings  had 
grown  to  a  substantial  body  of  reference  material. 
Twenty  states  or  more  had  organized  state  confer- 
ences. A  weekly  journal,  Charities,  was  published 
by  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of  New  York. 
Courses  In  "practical  sociology"  or  "charities  and 
corrections"  were  gaining  a  foothold  in  several  col- 
leges.   Among  social  workers  themselves,  especially 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  IS 

those  connected  with  the  charity  organization  socie- 
ties, there  had  been  for  eight  or  ten  years  a  desire 
for  training  courses  which  should  give  a  preparation 
for  such  work.  In  1898  the  first  of  these  training 
courses  had  been  undertaken  by  the  Charity  Organi- 
zation Society  of  New  York,  in  a  six  weeks'  "Sum- 
mer School  in  Philanthropic  Work." 

Among  the  questions  in  which  the  social  workers 
of  the  country  were  taking  a  lively  interest  at  the 
opening  of  the  twentieth  century  were  the  following : 

The  "spoils  system"  as  affecting  appointments  to 
positions  in  public  charitable  and  correctional  insti- 
tutions; more  generally,  the  importance  of  having 
capable  and  specially  equipped  men  and  women  in 
charge  of  all  work,  public  and  private,  for  the  poor 
and  the  sick  and  the  delinquent;  and,  by  consequence, 
the  need  for  training  courses  to  prepare  for  such  work; 

The  evils  of  the  county  jail  and  village  "lock-up," 
with  a  demand  for  the  very  abolition  of  these  insti- 
tutions; how  to  provide  work  for  prisoners  without 
subjecting  them  to  exploitation  and  without  arousing 
objections  from  organized  labor; 

State  care  vs.  local  care  (by  the  county  or  town) 
for  the  Insane;  advantages  of  the  "colony  plan,"  with 
simple  architecture,  for  Institutions  for  the  insane, 
feeble-minded,  and  epileptic,  In  place  of  the  palatial  or 
monastic  structures  which  had  prevailed; 

Subsidies  from  the  public  treasury  to  private 
charities,  especially  hospitals  and  orphan  asylums; 

"Abuse"  of  medical  charities,  by  which  was  meant 
the  use  of  hospitals  and  dispensaries  by  persons  able  to 
pay  for  treatment; 


16  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

Conditions  for  success  in  "placing-out"  dependent 
children;  advantages  of  country  life  and  the  "cottage 
plan"  in  institutions  for  children; 

Relative  advantages  of  advisory  state  boards  and 
boards  of  control;  of  a  single  supervisory  board  for  all 
state  institutions  and  of  specialized  boards; 

The  "scope"  and  "purpose"  and  methods  of 
"organized  charity,"  and  its  "relation"  to  all  the  older 
forms  of  philanthropy ; 

Haw  to  secure  and  keep  and  train  "friendly  visitors" 
and  use  them  to  the  best  advantage; 

Whether  a  charity  organization  society  should 
have  a  relief  fund  or  should  merely  investigate  cases  of 
distress  and  obtain  relief  for  them  from  appropriate 
sources  when  it  w^as  needed. 

Among  the  new  topics  which  were  gaining  a  place 
in  their  discussions  were  tenement  house  reform,  the 
social  aspects  of  tuberculosis,  physical  defects  of 
school  children,  backward  children,  juvenile  courts 
and  other  specialized  courts,  probation. 


Ill 

DEVELOPMENTS    IN   THE 
TWENTIETH  CENTURY 

On  these  foundations  rest  the  expansion  and  the 
developments  which  have  taken  place  since  1900. 
There  is  no  sharp  dividing  line  between  the  old  and 
the  new  in  social  work,  any  more  than  there  is  in 
any  other  department  of  human  activity;  nor  is  the 
new  something  essentially  different  from  the  old. 
Rather  it  has  developed  naturally  and  gradually 
out  of  it.  The  ideas  which  underlie  modern  theories 
of  social  work  have  been  expressed  here  and  there 
through  past  centuries;  the  germs  of  modern  meth- 
ods may  be  found  in  isolated  agencies  long  before 
the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century.  What  has 
really  happened  is  that  ideas  formerly  held  by  indi- 
viduals have  become  general;  that  methods  repre- 
sented by  sporadic  agencies  have  become  character- 
istic; that  there  has  been  a  shift  in  the  emphasis 
placed  on  the  various  causes  of  misery;  that  scien- 
tific progress  has  made  possible  both  a  better  under- 
standing of  social  problems  and  more  effective  meas- 
ures; that  the  scope  of  social  work  has  expanded; 
that,  partly  as  a  result  of  these  changes,  interest  in 
social  problems  and  in  social  work  has  extended  to  a 
considerable  part  of  the  population. 


18  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

DOMINANT   IDEAS 

One  of  the  ideas  which  became  dominant  among 
social  workers  early  in  the  present  century  was  that 
''prevention  is  Ketter  than  relief."  A  second,  in  the 
picturesque  phrase  of  Jacob  A.  Riis,  was  that  "a 
man  cannot  live  like  a  pig  and  act  and  vote  like  a 
man."  Both  these  ideas  grew  out  of  the  experiences 
of  men  and  women  who  were  engaged  in  work  for 
the  relief  or  the  reformation  of  individuals  or  who 
were  living  among  the  poor  in  social  settlements. 
They  could  not  fail  to  see  that  there  were  widows 
and  orphans  to  be  supported  because  men  had  died 
prematurely  of  preventable  disease  or  industrial  ac- 
cidents; that  back  of  the  superficial  shiftlessness  and 
intemperance  and  inefficiency  and  criminality  of 
those  whom  they  were  trying  to  help  were  such 
things  as  bad  housing,  congestion  of  population, 
child  labor,  over-work,  inadequate  pay,  absence  of 
opportunities  for  play — all  of  which  were  producing 
dependents  and  criminals  faster  than  the  public  and 
private  agencies  could  take  care  of  them;  and  that 
it  was  the  part  of  prudence  and  economy,  as  well  as 
of  humanity,  to  look  below  the  surface  and  to  take 
appropriate  action. 

Economists  supplemented  these  observations  of 
the  social  workers  and  confirmed  their  convictions  by 
pointing  to  the  material  resources  and  prosperity 
of  America,  and  suggesting  that  there  was  no  excuse 
for  want  and  misery.    The  characteristic  American 


\ 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  19 

attitude  of  impatience  towards  poverty,  which  had 
been  responsible  for  relative  indifference  to  social 
problems  in  earlier  days,  was  translated  into  an  en- 
thusiasm for  ^'prevention,"  and  the  vision  was  built 
up  of  a  nation  in  which  there  should  be  no  prevent- 
able poverty  or  preventable  disease  or  preventable 
crime.  "Maladjustment,"  ''exploitation,"  "social 
justice,"  "underlying  causes,"  "adverse  social  con- 
ditions," became  conspicuous  words  in  the  vocabu- 
lary of  social  work.  "A  decent  standard  of  living" 
and  consideration  of  what  constitutes  "a  living 
wage"  displaced  discussions  of  the  "dangers  of  pau- 
perization" and  distinctions  between  "worthy"  and 
"unworthy"  poor.  Thus  interest  shifted  from  the 
personal  to  the  environmental  causes  of  poverty  and 
crime;  from  "defects  of  character"  as  causes  to 
their  significance  as  symptoms;  from  moral  elements 
in  family  life  to  the  economic  and  physical  as  their 
determinants;  from  a  distrust  of  liberal  relief  to  a 
conception  of  the  pauperizing  influence  of  poverty 
itself. 

THE   NEW   SOCIAL   MOVEMENTS 

Out  of  these  ideas  naturally  developed  the  "or- 
ganized social  movements"  which  are  characteristic 
of  contemporary  American  philanthropy.  While 
they  have  worked  out  a  technique  strikingly  similar 
to  that  used  by  the  early  abolitionists,  temperance 
reformers,  and  advocates  of  "woman's  rights,"  they 
owe  no  conscious  debt  to  those  great  reform  move- 


20  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

merits  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  are  the  result 
of  fresh  consideration  of  particular  evils.  In  the 
past  twenty  years  one  destructive  social  force  after 
another  h^as  been  singled  out  for  special  study  and 
attack  by  appropriate  methods,  and  the  aggregate 
of  resulting  effort  and  interest  constitutes  in  each 
case  a  "movement."  There  has  been  considerable 
variety  among  them  in  strength  and  vitality,  and  one 
or  two  promising  beginnings  (for  diminishing  con- 
gestion of  population,  for  instance)  were  dissipated 
after  a  year  or  two,  or  absorbed  into  one  of  the 
others;  but  there  is  a  long  list  of  those  which  have 
made  an  impression  on  the  thought  and  the  action 
of  the  present  generation.  Conspicuous  among 
them,  for  one  reason  or  another,  are  the  movements 
for  the  prevention  of  tuberculosis,  cardiac  disease, 
blindness,  venereal  disease,  infant  mortality,  for  the 
control  of  cancer,  to  abolish  extortionate  charges 
for  loans  secured  by  salaries  and  pawnable  property, 
to  promote  wholesome  recreation,  to  diminish  child 
labor,  to  improve  the  health  of  children,  to  further 
industrial  education,  to  advance  the  interests  of  the 
Negro,  to  reform  the  criminal  law  and  criminal  pro- 
cedure, to  prevent  insanity  and  promote  mental 
health,  to  improve  housing  conditions,  to  improve 
and  standardize  labor  legislation. 

Each  of  these  movements  is  represented  by  a 
national  organization — some  of  them  by  several, 
promoting  different  aspects  of  the  general  purpose 
— and  in  most  cases  a  large  number  of  local  societies 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  21 

or  committees  also  exist,  more  or  less  closely  af- 
filiated with  the  national  body.  The  central  feature 
of  their  work  is  educational  propaganda,  based  on 
the  study  of  relevant  facts.  Whether  the  purpose 
is  to  secure  legislation  or  the  enforcement  of  laws, 
to  provide  needed  institutions,  to  stimulate  action  by 
public  administrative  bodies,  or  simply  to  spread 
information  which  individuals  should  have  for  their 
personal  guidance,  the  fundamental  necessity  is  to 
"educate  the  public."  Millions  of  dollars  have 
been  spent  to  this  end  in  the  last  two  decades,  and 
remarkable  ingenuity  has  been  used  in  devising  ef- 
fective methods.  Simple  "literature,"  presenting 
clearly  the  essential  facts  (about  the  nature  of  tuber- 
culosis, for  example,  and  the  precautions  which 
should  be  taken),  printed  in  alluring  style  and  trans- 
lated into  many  languages;  photographs,  lantern 
slides,  posters,  motion  pictures,  standardized  ex- 
hibits arranged  to  tell  the  whole  story  to  any  one 
who  walks  through  the  room;  monologues  by 
clowns,  plays,  "canned"  lectures  to  use  on  the  phono- 
graph; "Christmas  seals;"  a  press  service  supplying 
material  to  newspapers  all  over  the  country;  "clean- 
up weeks"  and  "fire  prevention  weeks;"  a  "tubercu- 
losis day"  or  a  "child  labor  day"  in  the  churches  and 
in  the  schools,  with  ready-made  lectures  to  be  used 
on  the  occasion;  lectures  and  motion  pictures  at 
county  fairs;  travelling  exhibits,  in  vans  and  motor 
cars,  touring  the  countryside, — are  some  of  the 
methods  which  have  been  utilized. 


22  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

RESEARCH   AND    SURVEYS 

Another  Inevitable  result  of  the  lively  interest  in 
''prevention"  and  in  "underlying  causes"  was  to 
stimulate  research  into  social  conditions.  The  new 
organizations  which  have  just  been  mentioned  were 
obliged  to  begin  operations  by  "collecting  data/* 
before  they  could  "push  a  program"  or  "educate  the 
public."  Charity  organization  societies,  settlements, 
and  others  among  the  older  philanthropic  agencies, 
began  to  delve  into  their  records,  or  into  their 
hitherto  unrecorded  experiences,  for  knowledge 
about  social  conditions  and  the  nature  of  poverty. 
University  professors  turned  their  students  into  the 
fascinating  field  of  "first-hand  investigations."  Sev- 
eral heavily  endowed  "Foundations"  were  estab- 
lished— notably  the  Russell  Sage,  the  Rockefeller, 
and  the  Carnegie,  and  a  little  later,  the  Common- 
wealth Fund — with  research  as  one,  if  not  the  pri- 
mary object.  For  about  a  decade,  beginning  about 
1902-04,  literally  innumerable  studies  were  made  in 
the  causes  of  poverty  and  crime,  the  "social  aspects" 
of  tuberculosis  and  other  preventable  diseases,  the 
relation  of  mental  defect  and  unsanitary  housing 
and  child  labor  and  congestion  of  population  to  de- 
pendence and  delinquency,  the  standard  of  living  of 
workingmen's  families  (how,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  lived  at  different  income  levels,  and  how  much 
income  was  necessary  to  secure  what  was  agreed  to 
be  a  normal  standard),  the  conditions  under  which 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  23 

men  and  women  and  children  worked,  and  similar 
questions. 

Fragmentary  studies  in  one  factor  after  another 
inspired  a  desire  for  something  more  comprehensive, 
and  in  1907  the  "Pittsburgh  Survey"  was  under- 
taken by  the  committee  in  charge  of  the  publication 
then  known  as  Charities  and  the  Commons  (now 
the  Survey)^  with  financial  support  from  the  Russell 
Sage  Foundation,  and  with  co-operation  from  many 
of  the  social  and  sanitary  movements  of  the  country 
and  from  citizens  and  organizations  of  Pittsburgh. 
It  was  an  attempt  to  get,  and  then  to  present,  a 
bird's-eye  view  of  the  conditions  affecting  the  wage- 
earning  population  of  an  industrial  center.  These 
studies,  published  later  in  six  volumes,  had  imme- 
diate practical  results  in  Pittsburgh  itself.  They 
have  had  a  wider  influence — because  of  the  dramatic 
prominence  assumed  in  them  by  industrial  accidents, 
the  twelve-hour  day  and  the  seven-day  week — in  im- 
pressing on  America  the  evils  of  over-work  and  of 
the  out-worn  theory  of  employers'  liability.  They 
also  established  the  "social  survey"  as  a  method  of 
research.  There  have  been  only  one  or  two  equally 
ambitious — notably  one  of  Springfield,  Illinois,  con- 
ducted by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation's  Depart- 
ment of  Surveys  and  Exhibits — but  surveys  of  the 
educational  system,  of  the  social  agencies,  of  the 
facilities  for  recreation,  of  provision  for  the  care  of 
the  sick,  of  agencies  for  child  welfare,  etc.,  etc.,  have 
been  made  under  various  auspices  in  many  cities  and 


24  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

States;  and  although  this  method  has  at  times  been 
absurdly  applied,  it  has  done  a  great  deal  to  estab- 
lish the  sound  principle  that  plans  for  improvement 
should  be  based  solidly  on  an  understanding  of  the 
actual  conditions  and  factors  in  the  situation, 

REACTION   ON   RELIEF   AND    CORRECTION 

The  impulse  to  the  educational  movements  and 
to  research,  as  has  been  indicated,  originated  in  the 
older  forms  of  social  work,  and  many  beginnings 
are  to  be  traced  more  particularly  to  the  New  York 
Charity  Organization  Society.  Within  a  few  years 
( 1 897-1905)  this  society  enlarged  its  activities  by 
establishing  a  Tenement  House  Committee,  a  Com- 
mittee on  the  Prevention  of  Tuberculosis  (which  in 
its  first  year  or  two  formulated  the  program  and 
initiated  the  methods  which  have  been  followed  by 
local  associations  generally  in  this  and  other  educa- 
tional movements,  and  promoted  by  the  National 
Tuberculosis  Association  after  its  creation  in  1904), 
a  Committee  on  Criminal  Courts,  a  school  for  the 
training  of  social  workers,  and  a  weekly  journal  for 
the  interchange  of  information  and  discussion  in  the 
field  of  philanthropy  ( The  Survey,  originally  Chari- 
ties, with  which  were  later  united  The  Chicago  Com- 
mons,  Jewish  Charity,  The  Charities  Review,  and 
Lend-a-Hand).  Other  societies  created  similar 
committees,  or  undertook  some  other  kind  of  educa- 
tional work  as  an  adjunct  to  their  original  function. 
The    charity    organization    movement,     in    short, 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  25 

"Americanized"  itself,  ceased  to  look  at  poverty 
through  the  spectacles  of  a  particular  class  move- 
ment in  England,  and  began  to  deal  with  it  in  a  more 
courageous  spirit,  by  methods  more  harmonious 
with  American  resources  and  American  traditions. 

All  these  new  activities,  in  turn,  had  a  reflex  in- 
fluence on  the  older  forms  of  social  work.  As  the 
idea  of  prevention  took  hold,  and  as  the  significance 
of  child  labor,  unsanitary  living  conditions,  over- 
work, ill  health,  and  other  social  problems,  came 
to  be  realized,  those  who  were  engaged  in  the 
relief  of  the  poor,  whether  in  public  or  in  private 
agencies,  found  their  task  growing  more  and  more 
complex.  There  were  many  more  considerations 
to  take  into  account;  there  was  much  more  to  do 
for  each  family;  and  it  required  a  great  deal  more 
money  to  do  the  minimum  that  they  could  be  satis- 
fied to  do.  In  particular  they  found  themselves 
logically  obliged  by  their  new  knowledge  to  examine 
into  the  health  of  each  member  of  the  family,  to 
see  that  physical  defects  in  children  were  corrected, 
that  the  family  diet  was  suitable  and  suflicient,  that 
the  home  was  decently  sanitary,  that  incipient  phy- 
sical and  mental  troubles  were  properly  treated; 
to  make  it  possible  for  children  to  stay  in  school 
at  least  as  long  as  the  law  required,  and  preferably 
beyond  that  age,  for  mothers  and  fathers  who  were 
ill  to  have  adequate  medical  treatment  and  con- 
valescent care;  and  to  supplement  the  income,  if 
necessary,  sufliciently  to  secure  these  essential  con- 


26  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

ditions,  though  of  course  without  permitting  any 
development  of  "the  pauper  spirit." 

Other  forms  of  social  work  were  impelled  to 
broaden  their  scope  in  different  ways.  Hospitals 
and  dispensaries  came  to  see  the  connection  of  their 
institutions  with  the  homes  of  their  patients,  and 
"hospital  social  service"  was  devised.  Provision 
for  the  insane,  for  the  tuberculous,  for  delinquent 
children  and  adults,  was  extended  in  both  direc- 
tions— to  watch  over  them  after  discharge,  and  to 
reach  them  at  an  earlier  stage  of  their  difficulties. 
Prevention  of  infant  mortality  led  back  to  pre- 
natal care  and  instruction  of  mothers. 

In  general,  interest  was  stimulated  in  the  begin- 
ning of  poverty,  disease,  and  crime,  in  the  less 
spectacular  of  their  manifestations,  and  in  the  less 
obtrusive  social  problems:  conditions  which  might 
later  lead  to  a  '^housing  problem"  where  none  is 
as  yet  discernible;  the  so-called  "minor  offenses," 
as  being  of  greater  social  significance  than  felonies; 
the  incipient  stages  of  physical  and  mental  disease; 
and  above  all,  the  early  stages  of  the  individual  life 
as  the  most  remunerative  object  of  social  effort. 
The  individual  acquired  a  new  importance :  as  a 
human  being  with  a  continuous  life  and  with  a 
place  in  the  evolution  of  the  race;  not  merely  an 
object  of  charity  or  discipline  for  the  moment,  but 
with  a  past  holding  the  explanation  of  the  present, 
and  with  a  future  to  be  influenced  by  the  present; 
and  not  an  isolated  individual,  but  a  unit  in  a  family, 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  27 

a  community,  a  nation,  contributing  to  their  char- 
acter, as  well  as  the  focus  of  all  the  social  forces 
they  represent.  The  possibilities  of  the  individual 
when  released  from  the  oppression  of  adverse  con- 
ditions were  realized  with  fresh  vividness.  "Re- 
habilitation" became  the  conscious  goal  in  philan- 
thropy and  correction.  A  desire  positively  to  in- 
crease comfort  and  welfare  and  joy  grafted  itself 
on  the  enthusiasm  for  preventing  unnecessary  mis- 
ery, and  by  the  end  of  the  first  decade  of  the  century 
it  could  be  said,  as  Jane  Addams  did  say  in  her 
presidential  address  at  the  National  Conference 
in  19 10,  that  ''the  negative  policy  of  relieving  des- 
titution, or  even  the  more  generous  one  of  pre- 
venting it,  is  giving  way  to  the  positive  idea  of 
raising  life  to  its  highest  level." 

STUDY   OF   METHODS 

Under  the  influence  of  these  various  ideas,  social 
workers  began  to  study  their  own  work  more  closely. 
They  became  suspicious  of  boasts  that  95  per  cent, 
say,  of  the  patients  were  "cured,"  or  that  85  per 
cent  of  the  inmates  of  a  reformatory  were  "re- 
formed," or  that  90  per  cent  of  the  children  placed 
out  "did  well;"  and  they  began  to  take  more  in- 
terest in  the  other  five  or  fifteen  or  ten  per  cent. 
They  tried  to  find  out  more  exactly  and  more  con- 
cretely the  results  of  their  work  as  they  stood  after 
a  lapse  of  five  or  ten  years;  and  when  they  did  this 


28  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

they  were  forced  to  recognize  the  necessity  for 
"follow-up  work,"  as  It  has  come  to  be  called,  de- 
scriptively if  inelegantly.  They  began  to  analyze 
their  own  methods,  and  to  try  to  appraise  them 
from  their  effects  on  the  lives  of  the  individuals 
concerned.  They  turned  their  attention  to  the 
clerical  and  mechanical  aspects  of  their  work,  and 
^'efficiency"  became  as  popular  among  them  as  with 
business  men.  They  isolated  special  classes  of 
cases  for  consideration  of  their  special  needs — wid- 
ows with  small  children,  deserted  wives,  adoles- 
cents, unmarried  mothers,  Italians,  Russians,  Poles, 
families  in  which  there  is  a  case  of  tuberculosis, 
and  so  on.  They  discussed  what  information  case 
records  of  various  kinds  should  contain,  and  how 
it  should  be  entered;  how  records  should  be  filed; 
what  circumstances  should  be  taken  into  account  in 
selecting  homes  for  children;  how  to  go  about  mak- 
ing a  "diagnosis"  of  a  famlly^s  situation,  or  an  in- 
vestigation of  any  social  problem;  how  to  prepare 
an  exhibit;  what  to  put  in  an  annual  report,  and 
how  to  print  it  and  illustrate  it;  how  to  raise  money; 
how  to  make  a  "survey;"  and  before  long  they 
were  talking  consciously  about  the  "technique"  of 
social  work,  arguing  for  it  as  a  new  "profession," 
and  demanding  certain  qualifications  in  those  who 
would  enter  it. 

TRAINING   SCHOOLS 

Training  schools  for  social  workers  were  both  an 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  29 

expression  of  this  interest  in  methods  and  in  turn  a 
stimulus  to  it.  The  Summer  School  of  Philanthropy, 
begun  in  1898  by  the  Charity  Organization  Society 
of  New  York,  was  expanded  in  1903-04  into  a 
course  running  through  the  academic  year,  to  which 
a  little  later  a  second  year  was  added,  providing  a 
two-year  course  of  special  training  for  graduate 
students  and  persons  who  had  had  the  equivalent  of 
a  college  course,  with  instruction  which  included 
both  study  of  principles  and  practice  in  doing  social 
work  under  supervision,  and  which  was  recognized 
by  Columbia  University  as  of  graduate  standard. 
Within  a  few  years  similar  schools,  affiliated  more 
or  less  closely  with  educational  institutions,  but, 
like  the  New  York  school,  owing  their  existence  to 
social  workers,  were  established  in  Boston,  Chicago, 
St.  Louis,  Philadelphia,  and  Richmond,  while  in- 
struction on  the  same  general  plan  was  introduced 
in  a  considerable  number  of  colleges  and  univer- 
sities. By  1920  such  training  was  offered  by  most  of; 
the  leading  educational  institutions  of  the  country, 
either  as  graduate  or  under-graduate  work  in  the 
departments  of  the  social  sciences.  The  tendency 
is  towards  making  such  training  a  recognized  ele- 
ment in  the  graduate  departments  of  universities. 
No  new  independent  schools  have  been  established 
for  a  decade  or  more,  and  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  them  (the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and 
Philanthropy)    was    discontinued   in    1920    on   the 


30  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

creation   of   a   Graduate   School   of  Social   Service 
Administration  in  the  University  of  Chicago. 

Whether  or  not  social  work  has  become  a  **pro- 
fession"  is  a  question  of  mere  academic  interest, 
and  open  to  dispute ;  but  it  has  at  any  rate  become  a 
recognized  occupation,  engaging  large  numbers  of 
men  and  women,  requiring  relatively  high  equipment 
in  the  way  of  education  and  personal  qualifications, 
and  offering  salaries  which  compare  favorably  with 
those  available  in  the  teaching  profession,  in  the 
ministry,  or  indeed  in  any  occupation  to  which  per- 
sons with  the  interests  and  the  preparation  of  social 
workers  would  naturally  be  attracted  and  for  which 
they  would  be  qualified. 

FORMULATION    OF    STANDARDS 

From  their  study  of  methods  social  workers 
were  led  to  formulate  standards,  and  this  has  been 
done  with  special  success  in  matters  of  legislation. 
The  Uniform  Child  Labor  Law,  prepared  by  the 
Commissioners  on  Uniform  State  Laws  of  the 
American  Bar  Association  and  adopted  by  the 
National  Child  Labor  Committee,  and  the  essential 
features  of  a  Workmen's  Compensation  Law  as 
advocated  by  the  American  Association  for  Labor 
Legislation,  are  conspicuous  examples,  to  the  in- 
fluence of  which  the  statute  books  of  most  of  the 
states  by  this  time  bear  witness.  Societies  engaged 
in  similar  work  have  formed  national  organizations 
which,  through  their  field  agents,  their  correspon- 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  31 

dence  with  local  branches,  their  district  and  national 
conferences,  have  promoted  uniformity  of  methods 
in  their  several  fields.  Standard  specifications  for 
the  construction  of  sanatoria,  standardized  exhibits, 
and  various  other  examples  of  this  tendency,  might 
be  mentioned;  but  aside  from  those  which  are  purely 
legislative,  the  standards  which  have  had  the  great- 
est influence  are  those  formulated  by  the  White 
House  Conference  on  the  Care  of  Dependent 
Children,  held  by  invitation  of  President  Roosevelt 
January  25-26,  1909,  and  by  the  Conference  on 
Child  Welfare  Standards,  held  under  the  auspices 
of  the  federal  Children's  Bureau  ten  years  later. 
The  unanimous  recommendations  of  the  White 
House  Conference,  which  consisted  of  216  men  and 
women,  representing  "every  state  In  the  Union, 
every  form  of  child-helping  work,  and  every  phase 
of  religious  belief,"  were  adopted  as  a  quasi  creed 
or  constitution  by  the  child  welfare  workers  of  the 
country.  The  Children's  Bureau  Conference,  held 
in  19 19,  at  the  close  of  the  "Children's  Year,"  had  a 
far  wider  scope.  It  considered  the  essentials  to 
child  welfare  from  every  conceivable  point  of  view; 
and  drew  up  minimum  standards  for  children  enter* 
ing  employment;  for  the  protection  of  the  health  of 
children  and  mothers  (before  birth,  in  infancy,  at 
"pre-school  age"  and  school  age,  and  through 
adolescence)  ;  for  the  protection  of  "children  in 
need  of  special  care,"  under  which  Is  Included  not 
only  the  care  of  all  who  formerly  were  known  as 


32  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

dependent,  defective,  and  delinquent,  but  also  ex- 
tended provision  for  the  welfare  of  all  children  in 
the  way  of  recreation  and  attention  to  their  "men- 
tal hygiene." 

COORDINATION   AND    "PROGRAMS'* 

Out  of  their  study  of  social  problems  as  such, 
and  out  of  their  scrutiny  of  their  own  work,  social 
workers  developed  a  new  sense  of  the  inter-relations 
of  social  agencies.  As  affecting  case-work,  this 
showed  in  an  increased  appreciation  of  the  idea  of 
"registration,"  which  had  been  one  of  the  cardinal 
principles  of  the  charity  organization  movement. 
Under  the  new  name  of  "confidential  exchange"  or 
"social  service  exchange,"  and  sometimes  under  new 
and  Independent  auspices,  it  has  been  possible  to 
establish  in  the  leading  cities  a  central  record  of 
the  families  known  to  the  various  social  agencies, 
so  that  each  society  may  learn  which  of  the  other 
agencies  are  or  have  been  interested  in  any  parti- 
cular family,  and  may  consult  with  them,  to  the 
advantage  of  all  concerned — especially  the  family. 
Furthermore,  social  workers  began  to  think  of 
particular  agencies  and  particular  methods  as  ele- 
ments In  the  community's  equipment,  to  consider 
what  place  each  one  should  occupy,  what  its  ap- 
propriate function  was,  and  what  was  needed  to 
supplement  it.  In  other  words,  they  began  to  make 
"programs :"  for  a  comprehensive  campaign  against 
tuberculosis;  for  a  charity  organization  society  in 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  33 

a  small  town;  for  an  adequate  system  of  care  for 
the  insane;  for  state  legislation  on  behalf  of  child- 
ren— "children's  codes,"  as  they  are  called,  pre- 
senting a  harmonized  and  comprehensive  plan  of 
desirable  laws;  and  so  on.  The  national  associa- 
tions in  the  different  educational  movements  not 
only  outlined  in  a  general  way  the  elements  in  the 
"campaign"  against  the  particular  evil  of  their  con- 
cern, but  also  suggested  concrete  programs  for  lo- 
cal organizations.  "Councils  of  social  agencies" 
have  been  organized  in  some  cities  to  promote 
mutual  understanding  and  the  development  of  a 
community  program,  while  the  "financial  federa- 
tions" which  have  been  developed  for  joint  raising 
of  funds  have,  as  an  incident  to  their  main  purpose, 
perhaps  been  the  strongest  influence  of  all  in  this 
direction.  Since  the  war  it  has  become  distressingly 
obvious  that  there  is  need  for  coordinating  the  ap- 
peals and  the  work  of  the  national  agencies  also. 

FINANCIAL   FEDERATIONS  AND   COMMUNITY  TRUSTS 

The  financial  federations  demand  more  than 
passing  mention,  for  they  bid  fair  to  establish  them- 
selves as  an  integral  feature  of  social  work  in  Amer- 
ica, and  to  have  an  important  influence  on  its  future 
character  and  its  future  status  in  the  social  economy 
of  the  country.  Before  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century  "bureaus  of  advice  and  information"  had 
been  created  by  the  charity  organization  societies 


34  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

in  several  of  the  large  cities,  as  a  service  especially, 
although  not  as  a  rule  exclusively,  to  their  own  mem- 
bers, supplying  them  on  request  with  information 
about  any  organization  or  individual  from  whom 
they  received  an  appeal  for  a  contribution.  In 
other  cities,  beginning  with  Cleveland  about  1900, 
the  chamber  of  commerce  had  established  a  "charity 
endorsement  committee,"  which  made  up  a  list  of 
aproved  agencies  for  the  convenience  of  its  mem- 
bers, who,  with  their  families,  constituted  a  large 
part  of  "the  giving  public." 

As  social  agencies  multiplied,  and  as  they  devel- 
oped their  appealing  powers,  the  competition  they 
plied  for  attention  became  so  intense  that  neither 
of  these  earlier  devices  was  sufficient  assistance  to 
contributors.  And  so,  a  few  years  before  the  war, 
there  arose  here  and  there  a  protest  against  the 
harassing  competitive  methods  of  the  local  charities, 
which  led  to  the  idea  of  "financial  federation:"  viz, 
that  all  the  agencies  In  a  community  which  depended 
on  voluntary  contributions  for  their  support  should 
form  an  association,  agree  on  a  joint  budget  for  the 
next  year,  throw  into  a  common  pool  their  contri- 
butors' lists  and  other  information  about  sources  of 
income,  present  their  united  needs  to  the  public  In 
a  single  campaign,  and  share  in  the  results  in  pro- 
portion to  their  budgets.  Jewish  charities  were  the 
first  to  do  this  successfully,  but  by  19 17  there  were 
general  federations  in  several  cities,  some  of  them 
with  several  years  of  experience  behind  them. 


s« 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  35 

When  the  war  brought  demands  from  a  host  of 
new  and  old  organizations,  in  sums  that  had  never 
before  even  been  imagined,  a  hot-house  develop- 
ment of  the  fundamental  idea  in  federations  was 
forced.  "War  chests"  were  set  up  in  some  300 
cities  by  the  summer  of  19 18,  to  raise  the  money 
asked  for  by  the  American  Red  Cross,  the  Y.M.C. 
A.,  the  Y.W.C.A.,  the  War  Camp  Community  Ser- 
vice, and  other  "war  work"  agencies,  and  in  some 
places  the  local  charities  also  were  included  in  the 
Chest.  The  general  satisfaction  felt  with  the  ex- 
periment led  a  number  of  the  cities  to  convert  their 
War  Chests  into  "Peace  Chests"  or  "Community 
Funds,"  and  there  are  now  (1921)  at  least  thirty 
important  cities  in  the  country  in  which  the  social 
agencies  have  adopted  this  method  of  raising  their 
funds  in  association. 

It  has  been  demonstrated  conclusively  that  a 
great  deal  more  money  is  secured  than  by  separate 
competitive  appeals;  that  a  much  larger  proportion 
of  the  population  contribute  (20-30  per  cent  instead 
of  an  estimated  2-10  per  cent)  ;  that  less  expense 
is  involved  and  less  annovance  to  contributors. 
There  has  been,  and  is  still,  though  it  is  diminishing, 
considerable  opposition  to  financial  federations  on 
the  part  of  some  social  workers:  part  of  it  due  to 
mere  short-sighted  jealousy  for  the  prestige  of  a 
particular  organization;  part  of  it  to  a  serious  ap- 
prehension that  some  subtle  control  of  the  policies 


36  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

of  the  social  agencies  would  be  exercised  by  the 
financiers  and  business  men  who  initiated  and  pro- 
moted the  plan  for  their  joint  financing.  These 
apprehensions,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  have  not  been 
realized  in  the  cities  where  federations  have  had  a 
fair  trial.  Indeed,  the  strongest  argument  in  favor 
of  them  lies  In  the  patent  fact  that  they  not  only, 
through  joint  budget-making,  joint  study  of  com- 
munity needs,  joint  planning  for  community  welfare, 
tend  to  dissipate  the  narrow  institutionalism  of  indi- 
vidual agencies,  but  that  they  also  increase  the  fund 
of  intelligent  interest  in  the  social  work  of  the  com- 
munity, and  provide  a  channel  through  which  the 
public  may  register  its  judgments  of  the  social 
agencies  more  effectively  than  heretofore  and  thus 
share  more  effectively  in  their  development.* 

Community  trusts,  such  as  the  Cleveland  Foun- 
dation and  the  Boston  Permanent  Charity — to  safe- 
guard bequests  and  gifts,  and  to  ensure  that  not  a 
"dead  hand"  but  a  living  intelligence  shall  deter- 
mine how  they  shall  be  applied  to  the  changing  needs 
of  the  community — are  another  manifestation  of  a 
healthy  concern  on  the  part  of  donors  for  the  way  in 
which  their  gifts  shall  be  used.  Within  a  few  years 
such  trusts  have  been  established  in  over  thirty  cities. 


*Four  articles  on  Welfare  Federations,  by  Edward  T.  Devine, 
were  published  in  the  Survey,  May  14,  May  28,  June  18,  and  July 
16,  1921.  A  full  discussion  of  giving,  from  the  contributor's  point 
of  view,  may  be  found  in  Hoiv  Much  Shall  I  Give?  by  Lilian 
Brandt,  published  by  The  Frontier  Press,  New  York. 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  Zl 

A  Uniform  Trust  for  Public  Uses,  suitable  for 
adoption  by  any  trust  company,  has  been  devised  by 
Daniel  S.  Remsen,  of  New  York,  as  a  standardized 
formula  for  the  creation  of  any  charitable  trust. 
Large  sums  have  been  assigned  to  the  care  of  the 
existing  community  trusts  in  wills  already  drawn, 
and  the  movement  may  have  a  profound  influence 
on  the  social  work  of  the  near  future,  and  is  there- 
fore deserving  of  the  most  careful  study. 

INCREASED   RELIANCE    ON   GOVERNMENT 

Throughout  this  period — even  before  the  war — 
there  has  been  a  noticeable  tendency  away  from  the 
old  American  individualism  and  distrust  of  govern- 
ment. Supervision  over  private  social  work  has 
been  extended,  and  there  has  been  a  tendency  to- 
wards some  degree  of  public  control.  Recourse 
has  been  had  to  legislation  to  establish  minimum 
standards  of  housing,  of  working  conditions,  even  of 
wages,  to  protect  women  and  children  in  industry, 
and  to  accomplish  other  objects  for  the  promotion 
of  the  social  welfare;  and  such  legislation  has  been 
increasingly  sustained  by  the  courts. 

The  great  cost  of  adequate  provision  for  the 
sick  and  adequate  education  of  the  well  to  prevent 
the  spread  of  disease,  together  with  the  growing 
recognition  that  to  be  adequate  such  measures  must 
reach  all  citizens,  have  made  it  inevitable  that  they 
should  be  undertaken  largely  by  public  authorities. 
Boards  of  Health  have  extended  their  control  over 


38  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

infectious  diseases,  as  public  opinion,  formed  by  the 
new  understanding  of  the  social  significance  of  such 
diseases,  has  given  them  support.  They  have  es- 
tablished sanatoria  and  all  sorts  of  clinics,  published 
and  distributed  tons  of  information,  and  maintained 
corps  of  nurses  and  physicians  to  visit  the  poor  in 
their  homes  and  give  them  verbal  instruction.  Pub- 
lic schools  have  added  physicians  and  nurses  and 
psychiatrists  and  dentists  and  "visiting  teachers"  to 
their  staff,  have  offered  evening  classes  and  vacation 
schools  and  public  lectures  and  opened  their  build- 
ings for  "community  centers,"  as  well  as  lent  a 
hospitable  ear  to  the  clamor  for  admitting  into  the 
curriculum  this  new  subject  or  that,  each  urged  as 
vitally  important  to  the  future  citizenry  of  the  coun- 
try. Three-fourths  of  the  states  have  established 
bureaus  of  "child  welfare"  or  "child  hygiene"  in  one 
of  their  departments. 

There  has  even  been  a  spectacular  extension  of 
public  out-door  relief,  which  had  fallen  into  dis- 
repute during  the  nineteenth  century,  and  was 
dwindling  rather  than  increasing.  Partly  as  a  result 
of  the  new  conviction  that  children  were  better  off 
with  their  mothers  than  in  institutions  or  even  in 
foster  homes,  partly  from  a  sudden  appreciation  of 
the  service  performed  to  the  state  in  the  bearing  of 
children  and  a  determination  that  the  state  should 
recognize  this  service,  most  of  the  states  of  the 
Union  within  a  very  few  years  (beginning  with  Mis- 
souri in  191 1 )  made  special  provision  for  payments 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  39 

from  the  public  treasury,  under  the  pseudonym  of 
^'widows'  pensions"  or  "mothers'  allowances," 
^'mothers'  aid,"  "funds  to  parents,"  or  even 
"mothers'  compensation,"  to  women  who  were  good 
mothers  and  who  without  this  assistance  might  be 
obliged  to  place  their  children  in  Institutions. 

Reliance  on  the  state  has  gone  so  far  as  to  de- 
mand assistance  in  promoting  social  welfare  from 
the  federal  government,  within  the  elastic  limits 
allowed  by  the  Constitution.  Its  taxing  power  has 
been  invoked  to  discourage  the  employment  of  child- 
ren In  factories,  mines,  and  quarries,  In  order  to 
extend  some  measure  of  protection  to  the  children 
in  the  more  backward  states.  Financial  aid  for  vo- 
cational education,  and  (by  a  measure  passed  since 
the  war)  for  the  re-education  of  Industrial  cripples, 
has  been  granted  by  the  federal  government  to  the 
states  In  proportion  to  their  population  and  their 
own  appropriations  for  the  purpose;  and  for  several 
years  similar  assistance  on  the  same  principles  has 
been  urged  to  stimulate  provision  for  maternity  care, 
particularly  In  the  rural  districts.  The  Department 
of  Agriculture  has  done  "social  work"  on  a  sub- 
stantial scale  In  rural  districts.  "Labor"  has  been 
taken  out  of  the  Department  of  Commerce  and 
Labor  and  erected  Into  a  separate  department,  with 
corresponding  Increase  In  Importance.  A  Children's 
Bureau,  placed  almost  by  chance  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  Labor,  was  created  in  191 2,  at  the  instance 
of  the  social  workers  of  the  country,  who  are  also 


40  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

generally  in  sympathy  with  the  current  demands  of 
the  physicians  for  a  Department  of  Health  and  of 
the  teachers  for  a  Department  of  Education,  each 
with  a  secretary  occupying  a  seat  in  the  President's 
Cabinet. 

CHANGES   IN    VOCABULARY 

In  the  vocabulary  of  social  work,  euphemisms 
have  been  substituted  very  generally  for  older  ex- 
pressions which  had  come,  either  justly  or  through 
some  unfortunate  misunderstanding,  to  have  un- 
pleasant associations.  "Mothers'  allowances"  is  one 
example.  Against  the  word  "charity"  in  particular 
there  has  been  a  veritable  revolt:  by  some  because 
they  think  that  the  idea  itself  is  unworthy  of  a  gen- 
eration which  has  envisaged  "social  justice;"  by 
others  because  of  the  "stigma"  attaching  to  the 
word,  which  prevented  the  poor  from  availing  them- 
selves of  the  help  of  the  organizations  existing  for 
their  benefit,  or  introduced  an  element  of  hardship 
with  the  help  if  they  were  not  so  prevented.  The 
combination  "charity  organization"  was  considered 
especially  obnoxious.  Early  misinterpretations  and 
criticisms  of  the  charity  organization  societies  had 
been  louder  than  all  explanations  and  refutations, 
and.  had  firmly  established  in  the  popular  mind  the 
idea  that  "organized  charity"  was  synonomous  with 
"red  tape,"  investigation  merely  for  the  sake  of 
making  a  record,  absence  of  human  sympathy,  un- 
willingness to  give  any  help  but  "advice,"  and  that 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  41 

of  a  distasteful  nature,  and  so  on.  It  was  argued, 
moreover,  that  chanty  organization  societies  had  so 
expanded  their  activities  and  so  modified  some  of 
their  original  functions  that  their  name  was  no  longer 
descriptive.  A  number  of  them,  accordingly,  and  of 
the  Associated  Charities,  shook  off  their  discredited 
titles  and  chose  to  call  themselves  "Social  Service 
Bureaus,"  "Social  Welfare  Leagues,"  "Family  Wel- 
fare Associations,"  or  something  of  the  sort,  while 
new  societies  took  such  names  at  the  time  of  their 
organization.  Many  of  these  societies  refer  to  their 
erstwhile  "cases"  as  "clients."  City  Departments 
of  Charities  became  "Departments  of  Public  Wel- 
fare." The  national  association  which  was  formed 
in  19 1 1  to  foster  the  charity  organization  movement 
now  calls  itself  the  American  Association  for  Or- 
ganizing Family  Social  Work,  and  it  publishes  a 
directory  of  what  it  calls  "family  social  work  soci- 
eties"— a  verbal  combination  which  may  avoid  of- 
fending the  susceptibilities  of  the  initiated,  but  which 
has  a  curious  sound.  In  the  latest  edition  of  this 
directory  (March  192 1)  a  little  over  a  third  of  the 
300-odd  societies  appear  under  the  new  style  names, 
which  incorporate  "welfare,"  "service,"  "commun- 
ity," "pubHc,"  "social,"  "family,"  in  a  great  variety 
of  combinations;  while  less  than  two-thirds  still  use 
a  name  Including  "charity,"  "relief,"  "aid,"  or  some 
other  indication  that  they  exist  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  assistance  to  those  who  need  help.  "Asso- 
ciated Charities"  Is  still,  however,  far  in  the  lead, 


42  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

with  over  a  hundred  adherents,  some  of  which, 
moreover,  have  been  organized  within  the  last  three 
or  four  years,  and  this  suggests  that  there  may  yet 
be  a  reaction  against  this  tendency  in  nomenclature. 
For  somewhat  different  reasons  "reformatories** 
for  boys  and  girls  have  become  in  some  cases  "in- 
dustrial schools;"  "Magdalen  Homes"  and  homes 
for  "fallen"  women  have  dropped  the  suggestive 
qualifying  word;  "idiot"  has  almost  disappeared 
from  use;  insane  "asylums"  have  become  "hospi- 
tals;" the  "almshouse"  or  "poorhouse"  has  become 
the  "count}^  infirmary"  or  the  "city  home  for  the 
aged."  The  movement  for  "social  hygiene"  has 
operated  from  the  beginning  (about  1905)  under 
this  discreetly  inoffensive  name. 

CONFUSION   AND    DUPLICATION 

What  with  the  broadening  scope  of  individual 
agencies — adding  to  their  original  functions  one 
new  one  after  another  to  which  they  find  themselves 
attracted — and  the  tendency  to  use  names  of  a 
pleasant  sound  and  vast  implications,  which  rather 
express  the  aspirations  of  the  organization  than 
describe  concretely  what  it  undertakes  to  do,  out- 
lines have  become  extraordinarily  blurred,  not 
merely  in  appearance  but  in  reality.  It  would  puzzle 
even  the  average  well-informed  contemporary 
American  to  say  whether  a  given  "public  welfare 
bureau"  or  "social  welfare  board"  is  part  of  the 
city  administration  or  a  private  society;  to  know  that 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  43 

a  ^'community  service  organization"  is  affiliated  with 
the  American  Association  for  Organizing  Family 
Social  Work,  not  with  Community  Service  (Incor- 
porated). The  National  Tuberculosis  Association 
is  "headquarters  for  the  Modern  Health  Crusade." 
There  exist  contemporaneously  an  "American  Child 
Hygiene  Association,"  a  "Child  Health  Organiza- 
tion," and  a  "National  Child  Welfare  Association," 
while  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee,  despite 
a  name  which  seems  to  indicate  a  tangible  and 
limited  task,  advertises  its  scope  as  including  also 
"education;  delinquency;  health;  recreation;  child- 
ren's codes."  A  list  has  been  compiled  of  sixty 
national  organizations  which  deal  with  one  aspect  or 
another  of  child  welfare,  and  the  number  concerned 
with  health  and  with  "Americanization"  must  be 
nearly  as  formidable.  This  confusion  and  duplication 
among  national  organizations  is  reproduced  in  the 
localities  to  which  their  influence  extends. 

There  is,  in  short,  among  the  educational  social 
agencies,  a  situation  very  similar  to  that  which 
existed  among  the  relief  societies  in  the  70's  and 
8o's,  and  which  led  to  the  movement  for  the  organi- 
zation of  charity.  The  National  Information  Bureau 
is  now  attempting  to  apply  to  national  organizations 
the  principles  of  the  endorsement  bureaus  of  the 
local  chambers  of  commerce,  and  has  undertaken 
an  inquiry  into  the  functioning  of  the  national  agen- 
cies in  selected  cities  which  should  be  very  useful. 
Several     gestures  toward  coordination  have  been 


44  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

made  by  the  national  agencies  themselves:  a 
^'National  Public  Health  Council,"  for  example,  has 
been  formed,  and  similar  movements  are  on  foot  in 
other  fields.  Whether  these  efforts  will  result  in  a 
genuine  coordination  (which  would  involve  a  limita- 
tion of  function  on  the  part  of  many  organizations) 
or  will  merely  add  to  the  confusion  by  creating  new 
national  bodies  charged  with  "coordinating"  the 
others,  remains  to  be  seen. 

THE   WAR   AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

The  first  effect  of  the  war  on  social  work  in  Amer- 
ica, while  the  United  States  was  still  neutral,  was 
to  strengthen  and  improve  it.  Sympathy  for  the 
sufferings  in  Europe  quickened  sensitiveness  to  social 
problems  at  home.  The  whole  world  became  a 
laboratory  of  social  work.  A  little  later  the  ap- 
peals of  the  Commission  for  the  Relief  of  Belgium, 
of  the  Y.M.C.A.,  for  its  work  among  the  prisoners 
of  war,  of  the  Red  Cross  for  its  hospitals  in  France 
and  its  Typhus  Commission  in  Poland,  tended  to 
drown  those  of  the  familiar  every-day  agencies  at 
home,  and  many  of  them  had  greater  difficulties 
than  in  many  a  day  to  carry  on  their  accustomed  ac- 
tivities. This  was  not  an  unmixed  evil,  for  it  com- 
pelled scrutiny  of  plans  within  each  organization, 
to  determine  what  could  be  spared  with  least  dis- 
advantage, or  how  more  work  could  be  done  with  a 
diminished  staff  and  less  money.  It  would  be  too 
much  to  say  that  the  decisions  were  always  wise, 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  45 

or  even  that  they  were  always  based  on  judicious 
deliberation,  but  the  general  effect,  as  it  is  when  an 
individual's  income  is  reduced,  was  to  force  a  more 
or  less  conscious  review  of  expenditures  and  to  con- 
centrate attention  on  the  essentials. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  in  April, 
19 17,  social  work  leaped  into  unprecedented  prom- 
inence. Many  of  the  wonted  social  problems  were 
intensified  and  some  new  ones  created,  especially  by 
the  operation  of  the  draft  and  the  establishment 
of  training  camps;  while  a  new  demand  for  persons 
with  experience  in  human  problems  sprang  up  in 
government  departments  and  war  industries.  A  fer- 
vor developed  for  "service,"  especially  for  service 
to  our  soldiers  and  sailors  at  home  and  abroad  and 
to  the  civilian  sufferers  in  the  countries  of  our  al- 
lies. The  Red  Cross  organized  its  Home  Service 
Sections  to  minister  to  the  families  of  men  in  ser- 
vice, its  Bureau  of  Refugees  and  Relief  in  France 
and  other  activities  on  behalf  of  the  civilian  popu- 
lations in  European  countries.  With  official  encour- 
agement, especially  from  Secretary  Baker,  the  seven 
"morale-making  agencies,"  as  they  were  called — 
the  Y.M.C.A.,  Y.W.C.A..  Knights  of  Columbus, 
Jewish  Welfare  Board,  Salvation  Army,  American 
Library  Association,  War  Camp  Community  Ser- 
vice— adapting  themselves  to  the  situation  or  created 
for  the  purpose,  and  "coordinated"  to  some  extent 
by  the  two  "Fosdick  Commissions"  in  the  Army  and 
in  the  Navy,  undertook  to  occupy  the  leisure  of  the 


46  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

soldiers  and  sailors,  in  training  at  home  or  on  duty 
abroad,  and  to  turn  it  from  a  liability  into  an  asset. 
They  provided  physical,  social,  and  spiritual  com- 
forts, mental  diversion,  games  and  entertainment, 
and  "surrounded  the  camps  with  hospitality,"  acting 
on  the  principle  which  social  workers  had  been  urg- 
ing for  twenty  years  or  more — that  wholesome 
recreation  is  a  preventive  of  vice,  a  promoter  of 
efficiency,  and  a  sound  social  investment. 

The  federal  government,  through  the  system  it 
adopted  of  allotments  and  allowances  to  the  families 
of  men  in  service,  compensation  for  death  and  dis- 
ability, re-education  of  the  disabled,  and  "war  risk 
insurance;"  through  the  Housing  Corporation,  the 
Federal  Employment  Service,  the  Division  of  Vene- 
real Disease  in  the  Public  Health  Service,  the  thrift 
campaign  of  the  Treasury  Department,  the  educa- 
tional work  of  the  Food  Administration,  and 
other  undertakings,  plunged  into  social  work  on  a 
gigantic  scale,  accessory  to  the  war.  Much  of  it, 
unfortunately,  though  wisely  conceived,  was  so  badly 
executed  that  it  is  a  national  disgrace,  but  customary 
indifference  to  logic  in  such  matters  has  permitted 
it  to  establish  a  conception  of  "Uncle  Sam  as  social 
worker"  and  to  strengthen  the  demand  that  the 
federal  government  should  make  more  substantial 
direct  contributions  to  social  welfare. 

The  established  forms  of  social  work  fared 
badly  under  the  competition  of  these  new  activities. 
Financial  support  was  difficult  to  secure,  and — what 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  47 

was  more  serious — many  agencies  saw  their  per- 
sonnel sadly  depleted  by  the  superior  appeal  of  "war 
work."  Young  people  without  experience  were  fre- 
quently the  only  ones  available  for  positions  of  re- 
sponsibility, and  the  poor  and  the  sick  had  to  take 
the  consequences.  On  the  other  hand,  many  cap- 
able men  and  women  who  would  not  otherwise  have 
been  attracted  to  social  work,  have  entered  it  as  a 
permanent  occupation  by  way  of  this  avenue  of  ap- 
proach; and  many  thousands  more,  who  have  re- 
turned to  their  former  occupations  or  their  former 
leisure,  have  had  experiences  which  cannot  fail  to  be 
of  advantage  to  social  work  because  of  the  interest 
they  will  keep  and  the  knowledge  they  have  acquired. 
Aside  from  this  increase  in  the  popularity  of  so- 
cial work  and  in  the  general  understanding  of  social 
problems,  the  conspicuous  effect  of  the  war  on  social 
work  in  America  has  been  to  hasten  the  process  of 
nationalization  which  had  been  going  on  for  half  a 
century.  This  has  shown  itself  not  only  in  the  dis- 
position to  expect  more  active  participation  by  the 
federal  government,  but  in  a  new  consciousness  of 
the  national  character  of  the  fundamental  problems 
of  education,  health,  and  an  adequate  income;  in  a 
new  prominence  accorded  to  certain  elements  of  the 
national  life  which  have  hitherto  been  comparatively 
neglected,  such  as  the  rural  population,  the  Negro, 
the  foreign-born;  in  a  new  realization  that  the  nation 
is  no  stronger  than  its  weakest  spot,  and  that  our 
boasted  democracy  is  only  factitious  as  long  as  cer- 


48  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

tain  great  sections  of  the  population  are  allowed  to 
labor  under  serious  removable  handicaps.  Topics 
in  which  interest  has  been  intensified  are  education, 
recreation,  physical  efficiency,  venereal  disease,  men- 
tal defect,  "community  organization,"  re-training 
of  cripples  and  other  handicapped  adults. 

In  general,  the  effect  of  the  war  has  been  to  con- 
firm the  principles  of  social  work  and  to  commend 
them  to  a  larger  public.  In  the  treatment  of  crim- 
inals, however,  it  has  been  the  reverse.  For  the 
moment,  at  least,  it  seems  that  much  of  the  progress 
painfully  made  in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury has  been  brushed  away.  The  military  and  poli- 
tical attitude  toward  the  conquered  enemy  is  seen  in 
a  reversion  to  the  principles  of  vengeance  and  re- 
tribution in  dealing  with  civilian  law  breakers. 
There  has  been  an  actual  increase  in  certain  forms 
of  crime,  especially  violence  and  banditry,  and  in- 
dignation over  the  "crime  wave"  has  temporarily 
overcome  that  concern  for  the  individual  offender 
which  had  been  slowly  growing  under  the  teachings 
of  penologists.  A  reaction  has  taken  place  in  favor 
of  the  death  penalty  and  of  severe  and  even  brutal 
sentences.  The  substitution  in  192 1  of  lethal  gas 
for  hanging  or  shooting  as  the  method  of  executing 
the  death  penalty  in  the  state  of  Nevada  was  no 
doubt  actuated  by  the  belief  that  it  is  more  humane, 
but  one  of  the  arguments  presented  on  behalf  of 
this  greater  humanity  was  that  it  would  abate  the 
sentiment  against  the  death  penalty. 


IV 
PRACTICAL  ADVANCE:  1900-1920 

In  these  twenty  years  of  the  twentieth  century,  as 
always  in  human  history,  Ideas  have  far  outstripped 
practice,  and  in  social  work  the  gap  between  gen- 
erally accepted  theories  and  actual  provision  is  as 
wide  as  it  was  In  1900.  Both  ideals  and  practice 
have  made  great  strides  in  advance,  and  they  are 
still  far  apart.  By  way  of  summary — what  differ- 
ence have  the  twenty  years  made  to  the  individuals 
whose  welfare  is  at  stake  ? 

GENERAL   RELIEF 

The  fundamental  task  of  helping  those  who  are  in 
some  sort  of  economic  difficlulty  is  done  more  thor- 
oughly. A  larger  proportion  of  those  who  need 
assistance  receive  It;  a  larger  proportion  receive  a 
kind  and  amount  adapted  to  their  needs;  individual 
and  family  situations  which  are  likely  to  produce  de- 
pendence later  are  more  frequently  recognized  and 
more  frequently  corrected.  Just  how  much  pro- 
gress these  comparatives  measure,  however,  it  would 
be  difficult  to  estimate.  There  are  now  over  three 
hundred  "family  social  work  societies,"  as  com- 
pared with  one  hundred  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century.  The  Home  Service  Sections  of  the  Red 
Cross,  which  have  been  continued  in  some   small 


50  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

towns  and  rural  communities  since  the  close  of  the 
war,  supply  for  those  places  something  correspond- 
ing to  the  general  relief  society  or  "family  society" 
in  the  cities.  Public  relief  has  been  extended  by  the 
all  but  universal  provision  of  "mothers'  allowances," 
though  they  are  generally  inadequate  in  amount 
and  inadequately  or  incompletely  supervised.  An 
organized  system  for  assuring  prompt  relief  in  any 
community  visited  by  a  disaster — fire,  flood,  earth- 
quake, forest  fire,  cyclone,  explosion,  tidal  wave — 
has  existed  since  1906  under  the  auspices  of  the  Red 
Cross. 

In  theory  "rehabilitation"  is  accepted  as  the  ob- 
ject of  the  social  agencies  which  have  to  do  with 
children  or  with  family  groups  or  individuals  capable 
ultimately  of  self-support,  including  the  public  de- 
partments which  administer  out-door  relief;  and 
each  year  brings  a  clearer  understanding  of  what 
this  theory  involves.  Available  resources  for,  re<:- 
reation  and  education,  for  physical  and  mental 
examination  and  treatment,  are  utilized  more  fully. 
Money  is  spent  much  more  freely,  especially  to  en- 
sure adequate  food,  sanitary  homes,  the  recovery 
or  preservation  of  health,  to  keep  families  together, 
and  to  keep  children  in  school.  In  public  institu- 
tions diet  has  improved,  even  under  the  shrinkage  in 
the  purchasing  power  of  appropriations,  and  in  gen- 
eral the  physical  conditions  are  better.  Here  and 
there  the  almshouse  has  been  transformed  in  accord- 
ance with  the  theories  of  the  nineteenth  century, 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  51 

and  through  the  continued  growth  of  specialized  In- 
stitutions its  population  Is  gradually  decreasing  and 
by  this  process  of  attrition  it  is  losing  Its  place  of 
preeminence  among  the  social  agencies  of  the  coun- 
try. It  is  still,  however,  much  the  same  institution 
that  it  was  twenty  years  ago,  and  it  still  affects  far 
too  many  individuals  to  justify  the  indifference  which 
is  still  its  portion.  In  other  respects,  too,  there  has 
been  little  advance  in  provision  for  those  who  reach 
old  age  without  resources  and  without  relatives  who 
can  take  care  of  them :  accommodations  In  private 
homes  for  the  aged  have  not  increased  substantially; 
the  plan  of  placing  them  In  families  has  nowhere 
had  much  attention;  and  thus  far  there  has  not  been 
much  sentiment  in  any  state  in  favor  of  old  age 
pensions,  nor  much  evidence  brought  forward  that 
they  are  needed. 

CHILD    WELFARE      * 

Children  (the  other  class  of  "natural  depend- 
ents"), in  their  character  as  the  most  responsive 
subjects  for  both  "preventive"  and  "constructive" 
efforts,  have  acquired  a  new  and  scientific  interest, 
which,  combined  with  their  undiminished  appeal  to 
the  affections  and  sympathies,  has  made  this  indeed 
"the  century  of  the  child."  The  case  of  the  child 
who  must  be  supported  wholly  or  In  part  by  others 
than  his  parents  or  near  relatives  has  improved  more 
than  that  of  the  aged.  There  are  more  chances  than 
there  were  twenty  years  ago  that  arrangements  will 


52  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

be  made  for  him  to  stay  with  his  own  mother  or 
that  he  will  be  placed  in  some  other  family  where 
he  will  at  least  have  the  experiences  and  training  of 
family  life;  if  the  latter,  that  the  home  will  be 
chosen  with  reference  to  his  particular  requirements 
of  mind,  body,  and  temperament,  and  that  in  case 
of  a  mistake  it  will  be  discovered  before  his  future 
is  seriously  jeopardized.  If  he  goes  to  an  institu- 
tion, it  is  more  likely  to  be  one  in  which  he  is  re- 
garded as  an  individual,  and  in  which  the  life  is 
organized  for  the  benefit  of  the  children  rather  than 
primarily  for  ease  and  economy  of  administration. 
The  capital  invested  in  old-style  congregate  institu- 
tions and  the  initial  cost  of  replacing  them  by  a 
plant  on  the  cottage  plan  retards  the  tendency  in 
this  direction.  Few  institutions  of  the  old  type  have 
been  constructed  in  recent  years,  and  some  old  insti- 
tutions have  moved  out  from  the  city  into  a  colony 
of  small  buildings  of  home-like  architecture,  permit- 
ting better  classification  of  the  children  and  a  more 
nearly  normal  life;  but  the  process  of  displacement 
is  slow,  the  nineteenth  century  city  institution  still 
predominates,  and  the  character  of  the  life  which 
can  be  organized  in  an  institution  is  largely  deter- 
mined by  its  architecture.  While  in  the  best  institu- 
tions and  the  best  placing-out  agencies  physical  and 
mental  examinations  are  given  to  the  children  and 
more  careful  attention  is  paid  to  the  correction  of 
defects  than  in  the  average  family,  such  skilled  pro- 
fessional care  is  still  the  exception,  not  the  rule. 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  53 

CARE  OF  THE  SICK  AND  PROMOTION  OF  HEALTH 

It  Is  in  provision  for  the  cure  and  prevention  of 
disease  and  for  the  promotion  of  health  "Ctetrtfe^ 
twenty  years  have  seen  the  most  marked  adv^ahce. 
Ill  health  as  a  cause  of  Individual  inefficiency  and 
poverty  and  even  crime ;  good  health  as  the  founda- 
tion of  Individual  welfare  and  happiness;  prevent- 
able disease  as  one  of  the  greatest  and  least  excus- 
able social  evils;  physical  efficiency  as  a  national 
ideal, — these  Ideas,  with  their  limitless  possibilities 
of  application,  elaboration,  and  sub-division,  have 
created  a  large  proportion  of  our  current  social 
work,  and  materially  modified  most  of  the  rest. 
General  hospital  accommodations  and  dispensary 
service  have  increased  at  a  rapid  rate,  considering 
the  investment  required.  Although  there  Is  not  yet 
suitable  provision  for  more  than  twenty  per  cent 
of  the  tuberculous  who  are  in  need  of  Institutional 
care,  still  nearly  all  of  the  60,000  beds  In  the  689 
sanatoria  and  special  hospitals,  day  camps  and  pre- 
ventorla  (January  i,  192 1)  have  been  provided 
since  1900.  This  Is  true  also  of  most  of  the  con- 
valescent homes,  the  many  specialized  clinics — pre- 
natal, "baby,"  dental,  venereal  disease,  psychiatric, 
etc. — the  medical  examination  of  school  children, 
the  nursing  service  of  schools  and  health  depart- 
m.ents.  The  level  of  knowledge  about  tuberculosis 
and  other  preventable  diseases  and  about  personal 
hygiene  has  rlseii  perceptibly.  A  new  type  of  agency 


54  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

is  now  coming  into  prominence — "health  centers" 
and  "well  baby  clinics,"  for  example — which  is  di- 
rected towards  the  preservation  and  improvement 
of  the  health  of  those  who  are  well. 

Provision  for  the  treatment  of  mental  disease 
has  also  continued  to  increase,  until  in  1920  there 
were  232,680  patients  in  institutions;  and  the  tend- 
ency already  well  established  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury towards  public  care,  and  that  by  the  state  rather 
than  by  local  units,  has  progressed  until  in  all  but 
eight  of  the  states  all  insane  who  are  public  charges 
are  found  in  state  hospitals  (i.e.,  none  in  almshouses 
or  other  county  or  city  institutions).  In  twelve 
states  now  there  are  psychiatric  hospitals,  psychia- 
tric wards  in  general  hospitals,  detention  hospitals, 
or  other  provision  for  the  temporary  care  of  mental 
cases.  The  corollary,  however,  is  that  in  36  states 
there  is  no  such  provision  for  temporary  care  and 
observation,  and  in  these  twelve  only  a  fraction  of 
the  population  is  thus  served.  The  hospitals  in  most 
states  are  sadly  over-crowded.  Notwithstanding 
this  pressure,  the  Scotch  plan  of  boarding  out 
selected  cases  of  certain  types,  which  has  long  been 
followed  with  success  and  satisfaction  in  Massachu- 
setts, has  not  been  adopted  elsewhere.  National 
prohibition,  however,  has  substantially  reduced  the 
number  of  admissions  to  the  alcoholic  wards,  and  it 
may  be  that  this  influence  will  enable  the  states  with- 
in the  next  few  years  to  match  accommodations  to 
applications.     A  few  institutions  undertake  to  keep 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  55 

watch  over  patients  discharged  as  cured  or  Im- 
proved, and  a  few  private  organizations  supplement 
the  work  of  the  public  Institutions  In  this  way  and 
also  try  to  avert  the  development  of  Insanity  In  In- 
cipient or  suspected  cases  which  are  brought  to  their 
attention.  In  New  York  a  state  system  of  clinics 
has  been  organized  under  the  joint  auspices  of  the 
state  hospitals,  the  state  Department  of  Health, 
and  the  Committee  on  Mental  Hygiene.  In  gen- 
eral, however,  the  prevention  of  mental  disease  and 
the  promotion  of  mental  health  are  still  novelties. 

For  mental  defectives  provision  has  Increased 
rapidly  as  compared  with  what  there  was  at  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  but  very  slowly  as  com- 
pared with  the  need.  There  were  about  40,000 
feeble-minded  In  Institutions  In  1920,  which  was 
twice  as  many  as  In  19 10,  but  not  more  than  six  per 
cent  of  the  estimated  total  number  In  the  country. 
There  are  still  fourteen  states  which  have  no  sep- 
arate Institution  for  such  patients.  While  there  has 
been  considerable  discussion  of  plans  for  registering 
mental  defectives  and  assuring  some  sort  of  com- 
petent guardianship  to  those  who  do  not  require 
Institutional  care,  such  plans  have  not  been  put  into 
operation.  In  the  conduct  of  the  Institutions  the 
tendency  Is  towards  making  them  less  custodial  In 
their  atmosphere,  more  medical  and  educational, 
less  like  a  poorhouse,  more  like  a  combination  of 
hospital  and  school,  but — as  It  has  been  quaintly  ob- 
served— many  states  are   "as  yet  unaware  of  the 


56  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

change."  Special  classes  for  backward  children  are 
now  maintained  in  over  a  hundred  cities,  but  the 
aggregate  enrollment  of  over  20,000  represents  only 
a  small  portion  of  the  children  who  would  benefit  by 
such  observation  and  attention,  even  in  these  citites. 

TREATMENT   OF    CRIME 

In  connection  with  crime  the  greatest  advance  has 
been  made  in  the  case  of  juvenile  delinquents  in 
cities,  who  are  now  treated  rather  like  neglected 
children  than  like  criminals.  Nearly  three-fourths  of 
them  now  come  before  courts  intended  especially  for 
children's  cases,  the  best  of  which  have  facilities  for 
thorough  physical  and  mental  examinations  and 
social  investigation,  and  judges  who  have  become 
expert  in  this  work.  All  the  states  except  Wyoming 
had  by  19 19  made  some  provision  for  the  use  of 
probation  for  juvenile  offenders,  and  about  half  the 
juvenile  courts  have  a  probation  service  in  opera- 
tion. Country  and  village  children  are  as  yet  hardly 
touched  by  these  new  methods.  The  proportion  of 
juvenile  delinquents  sent  to  institutions  is  smaller 
than  it  was  twenty  years  ago,  and  some  of  these 
institutions  have  become  excellent  schools.  They 
have  made  more  progress  than  those  for  dependent 
children  in  transforming  their  plants  and  their 
methods  to  correspond  with  current  theories  of  what 
they  should  be,  but  there  are  still  far  too  many  chil- 
dren living  in  vile  conditions  in  Houses  of  Refuge 
which  are  virtually  prisons. 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  57 

The  Interests  of  adult  criminals  have  advanced 
still  less.  It  is  more  generally  admitted  that  every 
correctional  institution  should  be  a  "reformatory," 
and  more  of  them  are  than  formerly,  but  this  idea 
is  not  yet  common  among  wardens  and  prison  of- 
ficials. There  is  increased  attention  to  physical  con- 
ditions and  needs,  better  ventilation,  im.proved 
sanitation,  more  physical  exercise,  and  in  the  re- 
formatories some  use  is  made  of  psychological  tests 
and  some  attention  paid  to  the  correction  of  physi- 
cal defects.  The  value  of  elementary  instruction 
and  of  productive  occupation  is  more  generally  real- 
ized in  the  state  prisons,  and  the  reformatories  pro- 
vide also  vocational  training.  The  old  perplexity 
of  how  to  prevent  prison  labor  from  competing 
with  free  labor  has  ceased  to  be  a  practical  prob- 
lem, with  the  general  acquiescence  of  organized 
labor  in  the  "state  use"  system.  Contract  labor, 
however,  is  still  found  In  many  state  prisons,  and 
there  has  been  little  or  no  progress  in  making  the 
work  of  the  man  In  prison  contribute  to  the  support 
of  his  family  at  home.  Iron  discipline  Is  still  the* 
rule,  and  there  has  been  little  improvement  in  diet. 
The  convict  lease  system  in  the  south  has  almost  dis- 
appeared. A  few  county  jails  have  been  remodelled 
and  a  few  others  have  been  replaced  by  farm 
colonies.  The  use  of  probation  for  adult  offenders 
has  increased,  though  less  rapidly  than  for  juvenile 
delinquents. 


58  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

Private  enterprise  in  these  twenty  years  has  con- 
cerned itself  chiefly  with  furthering  the  movement 
for  juvenile  courts  and  probation;  promoting  spe- 
cialized provision  for  women  offenders,  including 
policewomen  and  separate  detention  houses;  devel- 
oping protective  work,  especially  for  girls;  securing 
the  establishment  of  night  courts  and  special  courts 
for  cases  involving  family  desertion  and  other 
domestic  relations;  and  in  a  few  places,  in  intermit- 
tent efforts  to  secure  a  rational  treatment  of  beof- 
gars,  drunkards,  and  other  misdemeanants.  Interest 
at  present  seems  to  center  around  protective  work 
for  young  offenders;  the  need  of  separating  the 
feeble-minded  from  those  of  normal  mental  powers 
in  reformatories  and  of  distinguishing  between  them 
throughout  the  correctional  system;  the  possibilities 
of  educational  work  with  negligent  and  cruel  parents 
as  a  substitute  for  prosecution;  problems  of  court 
organization  and  procedure,  including  the  proposal 
for  merging  juvenile  courts  and  the  so-called  domes- 
tic relations  courts  into  "family  courts."  The  reac- 
tion to  a  medieval  attitude  towards  crime  and 
criminals  which  has  been  noticeable  in  public  opinion 
since  the  close  of  the  war  does  not  seem  to  be  shared 
by  social  workers. 

IMPROVEMENT    OF    CONDITIONS 

While  it  would  be  out  of  the  question  to  review 
in  this  place  the  progress  which  has  been  made  dur- 
ing the  twentieth  century  in  the  general  standard  of 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY  59 

living  and  the  conditions  under  which  the  mass  of 
Americans  live  and  work,  still  so  large  a  part  of  the 
social  work  of  these  twenty  years  has  been  con- 
sciously directed  towards  this  object  that  it  would 
be  equally  impossible  to  close  without  a  reference 
to  it.  The  contribution  of  organized  social  work 
cannot  be  definitively  disentangled  from  that  of  or- 
ganized labor  or  the  press  or  the  medical  profession 
or  university  teachers  or  any  of  the  other  forces 
which  have  been  influential  in  bringing  about  these 
improvements,  but  it  is  patent  to  any  student  of  the 
period  that  it  has  been  an  important  factor.  The 
educational  social  movements,  through  their  re- 
search, their  programs,  their  publicity,  and  their 
propaganda,  have  to  a  large  extent  enlisted  the  in- 
terest of  the  other  factors,  determined  which  ques- 
tions should  have  precedence,  how  they  should  be 
presented  to  the  public,  what  policies  should  be 
pushed,  and  in  other  ways  have  influenced  the  direc- 
tion which  progress  should  take. 

The  twentieth  century  has  seen  two  of  the  great 
reform  movements  of  the  nineteenth — for  woman 
suffrage  and  for  national  prohibition — culminate  in 
amendments  to  the  federal  constitution,  as  did  their 
quondam  contemporary,  the  movement  for  the  abo- 
lition of  slavery,  half  a  century  earlier. 

The  movements  which  have  developed  since  1900 
have  different  objectives.  The  recreation  movement 
has  put  play  into  the  American  standard  of  living 
and  has  revised  the  values  attached  to  leisure  time 


60  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

from  childhood  to  old  age.  The  movement  for  the 
prevention  of  tuberculosis,  with  Its  off-spring  and 
associates,  have  produced  a  noticeable  revolution  in 
the  public  understanding  of  health  and  disease,  and 
in  provision  for  the  promotion  of  the  one  and  the 
cure  and  prevention  of  the  other.  Other  move- 
ments have  been  formulating  standards  and  getting 
them  crystallized  In  state  laws  and  city  ordinances. 
Standards  of  housing  have  been  very  generally 
established,  prescribing  a  minimum  of  sanitation, 
ventilation,  safety,  and  decency.  Thus  far  housing 
reform  has  accomplished  next  to  nothing  In  reducing 
over-crowding;  and  It  has  made  little  contribution  of 
a  positive  nature  in  the  situation  created  by  the 
decrease  in  building  operations,  begun  during  the 
years  of  the  war  and  continued  since  by  the  pro- 
hibitive cost  of  materials  and  labor — the  result  in 
part  of  conspiracies  among  producers  and  dealers 
which  have  recently  been  exposed  by  legislative  in- 
vestigations. But  the  standards  of  construction, 
although  gravely  threatened  by  the  shortage  in  ac- 
commodations and  the  consequent  demand  for  hous- 
ing of  any  kind,  if  only  It  be  shelter,  have  for  the 
most  part  been  maintained,  and  that  through  the 
activity  of  the  organized  Interest  in  good  housing, 
which  has  been  able  to  oppose  successfully  the  or- 
ganized Interest  on  the  other  side. 

Remarkable  progress  has  been  made  in  the  pres- 
ent century  in  labor  legislation — notably  the  substi- 
tution in  all  but  six  states  of  a  system  of  workmen's 


•      •     •  « 

«     •      a      « 


IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTU!Rnr  "     *.•..»>...  61 

compensation  for  death  or  Injury  from  industrial  \ 
accident  in  place  of  the  employers'  liability  pro-  \ 
cedure  which  was  generally  In  force  as  late  as  1911 ; 
the  protection  of  working  women;  the  provision  for 
fixing  a  minimum  wage  in  certain  low-paid  occupa- 
tions with  reference  to  the  cost  of  living;  and  the 
protection  of  children  by  gradually  pushing  up  the 
minimum  age  for  leaving  school  and  going  to  work 
until  it  has  reached  fourteen  in  most  states  and  six- 
teen in  several.  This  progress  is  largely  the  product 
of  the  movements  for  the  improvement  of  industrial 
conditions,  as  represented  in  such  organizations  as 
the  American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation,  the 
National  Child  Labor  Committee,  the  National 
Consumers  League.  And  when  the  temptation 
came,  under  the  pressure  of  production  for  purposes 
of  war,  to  relax  these  hard-won  standards,  it  was 
because  of  the  educational  work  of  these  and  kin- 
dred organizations  during  the  preceding  fifteen  or 
twenty  years,  and  because  they  were  at  hand  to  In- 
terpret the  experiences  of  European  states  and  to 
warn  of  the  dangers,  that  America  had  the  wisdom 
to  resist  the  temptation. 

PRESENT   NEEDS 
From  this  review  it  is  obvious  that  social  work  is 
in  its  gawky  adolescent  stage.     It  has  been  growing 
fast,  and  some  of  its  members  and  organs  have  not 
kept  pace  with  others.     In  particular: 

(i)  The  humanitarian  aspect  of  social  work  has  been 
overshadowed  by  the  twentieth  century  enthusiasm 


62  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  WORK 

r^ior  prevention;  provision  for  the  aged,  the  incur- 
able, the  feeble-minded,  and  others  who  do  not  in 
their  proper  persons  offer  favorable  material  for 
rehabilitation,  but  who  need  kindly  care,  has  not 
increased  and  improved  as  it  should,  or  as  might 
have  been  expected. 

(2)  The  multiplication  of  agencies,  and  the  tre- 
mendous expansion  of  some  of  them,  have  resulted 
in  a  vast  amount  of  expensive  administrative  ma- 
chinery for  connecting  headquarters  with  local 
units  and  one  organization  with  another,  without 
a  corresponding  gain  in  practical  co-operation  and 
in  tangible  benefits  to  the  poor  and  needy. 

The  urgent  need  of  social  work  just  at  this  time, 
if  it  is  to  reach  a  well-proportioned  maturity,  is  that 
it  should  "survey"  itself  with  the  same  scientific  eye 
that  It  has  been  turning  on  adverse  conditions;  ap- 
praising Its  accomplishments  with  reference  to  the 
total  number  of  human  beings  concerned  rather  than 
by  exceptional  cases  of  brilliant  success;  measuring 
progress  by  the  methods  generally  In  use  rather  than 
by  the  degree  of  acquiescence  In  formulated  prin- 
ciples or  the  extent  to  which  Its  own  jargon  has  been 
adopted,  and  above  all,  with  the  whole  complex  sys- 
tem of  social  work  In  mind,  not  one  specialized  field, 
much  less  the  Interests  of  one  particular  organiza- 
tion; and  that  It  should  then  enlist  the  Interest  of  a 
wider  public,  seeking  the  assistance  of  all  elements 
of  the  population  In  determining  policies,  until  the 
promotion  of  the  social  welfare  shall  be  no  longer 
the  affair  merely  of  a  small  "professional"  group, 
but  of  every  citizen  in  the  democracy. 


How  Much  Shall  I  Give  ? 

By  LILIAN  BRANDT 
With  an  introductory  note  by  Frank  A.  Fetter 


Examines  current  practice,  motives,  and  ideals 

with    respect    to     benevolent    giving,    reviews 

their  historical   backgrounds,    and    suggests    an 

answer  for  American  citizens  of  to-day 


1 53 -f- XIV  pages;  three  diagrams 
Price  ?2.oo 


■^1 


s 


THE  FRONTIER  PRESS 

lOO    WEST    TWENTY-FIRST    STREET,    NEW    YORK 


